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Reached down and gripped his brother 



SHAGGYCOAT 

The Biography of a Beaver 



BY 

CLARENCE HAWKES 

Author of " Three Little Folks" " Little 
Forresters " " Master Frisky " etc. 



ILLUSTRATIONS BY 

CHARLES COPELAND 




PHILADELPHIA 

GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO 

PUBLISHERS 



OCT 1 1906 




Copyright, 1906, 
By George W. Jacobs & Company 

Published September, igo6 



All rights reserved 
Printed in U. S. A. 



SHAGGYCOAT 

The Biography of a Beaver 



Dedicated to my Little Brother, the Ve- 
netian f who, living in a house that his 
hands have made, surrounded by a moat 
of his own device, the head of a large 
family and a citizen in a goodly com- 
munity, is more like man in his mode of 
life, than any other of God } s creatures. 



KING OF ALL THE BEAVERS 

Till he came unto a streamlet 

In the middle of the forest, 

To a streamlet still and tranquil, 

That had overflowed its margin, 

To a dam made by the beavers, 

To a pond of quiet water, 

Where knee-deep the trees were standing, 

Where the water-lilies floated, 

Where the rushes waved and whispered. 

On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis, 

On the dam of trunks and branches, 

Through whose chinks the water spouted, 

O'er whose summit flowed the streamlet. 

From the bottom rose the beaver, 

Looked with two great eyes of wonder, 

Eyes that seemed to ask a question, 

At the stranger Pau-Puk-Keewis. 

— Longfellow. 



CONTENTS 





Introduction .... 


. 11 


I. 


The Fugitives . 


. 23 


II. 


Alone in the "World 


. 39 


III. 


The Courtship of Shaggycoat 


, 53 


IV. 


How the Great Dam was Built 


. 67 


V. 


A Beaver Lodge 


. 81 


VI. 


How the Winter "Went . 


. 97 


VII. 


Life in the "Water World . 


. Ill 


VIII. 


A Bit of Tragedy . 


125 


IX. 


Strangers at the Lake . 


141 


X. 


A Troublesome Fellow . 


. 163 


XI. 


A Bank Beaver 


. 181 


XII. 


The Builders .... 


. 195 


XIII. 


Beaver Joe .... 


211 


xrv. 


Running- Water . 


225 


XV. 


King of Beavers 


. 243 


XVI. 


Old Shag 


261 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Beached down and gripped his brother Frontispiece 

The final touches were put upon this 

curious dome-shaped house . Facing page 86 

Tearing at their house and filling 

the night with awful sounds . " " 96 

The buck gave a mighty leap and 

fell midway in the stream . " " 122 

There is where the hunter and hunted 

met " " 193 



A FOURFOOTED AMERICAN 
Introductory 



A FOURFOOTED AMERICAN 

Introductory 

Just how long the red man, in company 
with his wild brothers, the deer, the bear, 
the wolf, the buffalo, and the beaver had in- 
habited the continent of North America, be- 
fore the white man came, is a problem for 
speculation ; but judging from all signs it 
was a very long time. The Mound Builders 
of Ohio and the temple builders of Mexico 
speak to us out of a dim prehistoric past, 
but the song and story of the red man and 
many a quaint Indian tradition tell us how 
he lived, and something of his life and re- 
ligion. 

If we look carefully into these quaint 
tales and folk-lore of the red man, we shall 
find that he lived upon very intimate rela- 
tions with all his wild brothers and while 



14 Shaggy coat 



he hunted them for meat and used their 
skins for garments and their hides for bow- 
strings, yet he knew and understood them 
and treated them with a reverence that his 
white brother has never been able to feel. 

Before the red man bent the bow he 
sought pardon from the deer or bear for the 
act that he was about to commit. Often 
when he had slain the wild creature, he 
made offerings to its departed spirit, and 
also wore its likeness tattooed upon his 
skin as a totem. Thus we see that these 
denizens of the wilderness were creatures of 
importance, playing their part in the life of 
the red man, even before the white man 
came to these shores. But that they should 
have continued to play a prominent part 
after the advent of the white man is still 
more vital to us. 

It was principally for beaver skins that 
the Hudson Bay Company unfurled its 
ensign over the wilds of Labrador and upon 



A Fourfooted American 1 5 

the bleak shores of Hudson Bay, during 
the seventeenth century. H. B. C. was the 
monogram upon their flag. Their coat of 
arms had a beaver in each quarter of the 
shield, and their motto was Pro Pelle Cutem, 
meaning skin for skin. An official of the 
company once interpreted the H. B. C. as 
" here before Christ/ ' saying that the com- 
pany was ahead of the missionaries with its 
emblem of civilization. 

For more than two hundred and twenty- 
five years this company has held sway 
over a country larger than all the kingdoms 
of Europe, counting out Russia. For the 
first one hundred years it was the only 
government and held power of life and 
death over all living in its jurisdiction. 

It was because the Indian knew that he 
could get so many knives or so much cloth 
for a beaver skin, that he endured the ter- 
rible cold of the Arctic winter, and hunted 
and trapped close to the sweep of the Arctic 



16 Shaggy coat 



Circle. For this valuable skin white trap- 
pers built their camp-fire and slept upon ten 
feet of snow. It was a common day's 
work for a trapper to drag his snow-shoes 
over twenty miles of frozen waste to visit 
his traps. 

For the pelts of the beaver, otter and 
mink, those bloody battles were fought be- 
tween the Hudson Bay Company men and 
the trappers of the Northwest Company. 
The right to trap in disputed territory was 
held by the rifle, and human life was not 
worth one beaver skin. 

In those old days, so full of hardship and 
peril, the beaver skin was the standard of 
value in all the Hudson Bay Company's 
transactions. Ten muskrat skins, or two 
mink skins made a beaver skin, and the 
beaver skin bought the trapper his food and 
blanket. 

The first year of its existence the Hudson 
Bay Company paid seventy-five per cent. 



A Four footed American 17 

upon all its investments, and for over two 
centuries it has been rolling up wealth, 
while to-day it is pushing further and 
further north and is more prosperous than 
ever, and all this at the expense of the 
beaver and his warm-coated fellows. 

Even the civilization of Manhattan com- 
prising what is now New York and Brook- 
lyn was founded upon the beaver skin. It 
was a common thing in the days of Wouter 
Van Twiller, for the colony of the Hudson 
to send home to the Netherlands eighty 
thousand beaver skins a year. 

John Jacob Astor, the head of the rich 
New York family laid the foundations for 
his colossal wealth in beaver skins, and this 
is the history of the frontier in nearly all 
parts of the country. 

But there were other ways in which the 
beaver was advancing the white man's 
civilization and making his pathway 
smooth, even before he came to destroy his 



1 8 Shaggycoat 



four-footed friend, for the beaver was the 
first woodsman to fell the forest and clear 
broad acres of land that were afterward 
used for tillage. He also was the first en- 
gineer to dam the streams and rivers. To- 
day almost anywhere in New England you 
can see traces of his industry. You may 
not recognize it, but it is there. 

Nearly all the small meadows along our 
streams were made by the beavers and acres 
of the best tillage that New England con- 
tains were cleared by them. 

They dammed the stream to protect their 
communities from their enemies, and flowed 
large sections of territory. All the timber 
upon the flooded district soon rotted and 
fell into the lake and in this way great sec- 
tions were cleared. 

Each spring the freshets brought down 
mud and deposited it in the bottom of the 
lake until it was rich with rotting vege- 
table matter and decaying wood. Then 



A Fourfooted American 19 

the trapper came and caught the beaver, so 
that the dam fell into disuse. Finally it 
was swept away entirely, and a broad fertile 
meadow was left where there had been a 
woodland lake. Thus the beaver has made 
meadowland for us all the way from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, and we have shoved 
him further and further from his native 
haunts. 

To-day he has entirely disappeared from 
New England, with the exception of a few 
scattered colonies in Maine, where he is 
protected by his neighbors who have be- 
come interested in his ways. There is also 
a protected colony in Northern New York, 
and a few scattered beavers in the moun- 
tains of Virginia, but this industrious pre- 
historic American has largely disappeared 
from the United States, east of the Rocky 
Mountains. His home, if he now has any 
in the land he once possessed, is in Mon- 
tana, where he lives in something of his 



2o Shaggycozt 



old abandon. There he still makes new 
meadow lands for the cattle men and rears 
his conical house in his forest lake. 

Like the red man he has been thrust 
further and further into the wild ; retreat- 
ing before the shriek of the locomotive, and 
those ever advancing steel rails. But the 
debt that we owe the beaver will remain as 
long as we cut grass upon our meadow land, 
or appropriate the coat of this sleek Amer- 
ican for our own. 

Thus the blazed trail is pushed on and on 
into the wilderness and the old is succeeded 
by the new. Animals, birds, and trees dis- 
appear, and brick blocks and telephone 
poles take their places. 

Though he will ultimately disappear 
from the continent, we shall always be 
heavily in debt to the beaver for the im- 
portant part that he played in the colonial 
history of America. 

Like the red man he is a true American, 



A Fourfooted American 2 1 

for he was here before Columbus, and his 
pelt was the prize for which the wilder- 
ness was scoured. His only disqualifica- 
tion for citizenship in our great and grow- 
ing country is that he is a fourfooted 
American, while we, his masters, are bipeds. 



CHAPTER I 
FUGITIVES 



CHAPTER I 

FUGITIVES 

At the time when our story begins, Shag- 
gycoat was a two-year-old beaver, fleeing 
with his grandfather from he knew not 
what. They had been so happy in the 
woodland lake, which was their home be- 
fore the terrible intrusion, that the whole 
matter seemed more like a hideous dream 
than a reality. 

When Shaggycoat thought of the old 
days and his family, he could remember 
warm summer afternoons upon clean sand 
banks, where he and his brothers and sisters 
frolicked together. Then there were such 
delightful swims in the deep lake, where 
they played water-tag, and all sorts of 
games, diving and plunging and swimming 
straight away, not to mention deep plunges 



26 Shaggycozt 



to the bottom of the lake where they vied 
with one another in staying down. Then 
when they were hungry, the bulbs of the 
lily and a cluster of wild hops made a din- 
ner that would make a beaver's mouth 
water ; with perhaps some spicy bark added 
as a relish. 

Then came the cold and the pond was 
covered with ice. They could still see the 
sun by day and the stars by night, but they 
could not come to the surface to breathe as 
they had done before. There were a great 
many air holes, and places under the ice 
where the water did not reach it, but for 
breathing space they had to depend largely 
upon the queer conical houses in which 
they lived and their burrows along the 
bank. 

There was still another way to breathe 
that I had nearly forgotten. A beaver or 
any of these little Water Folks can come up 
to the surface and breathe against the ice. 



Fugitives 27 

A big flat bubble is at once formed and as 
it strikes the ice it is purified and then the 
beaver breathes it in again and it is almost 
as fresh as though it came from the upper 
air. This he can do three or four times be- 
fore having to find an air hole or going into 
one of the houses or burrows. 

The beavers were very snug under the ice 
which kept away the wind and cold, and 
also their worst enemy, man. 

The breath of the family made the houses 
warm, and as the walls were frozen solid, 
and were two or three feet thick, they were 
very hard to break into. 

A store of wood had been laid up from 
which the bark was stripped for food as fast 
as it was needed, so that Beaver City had 
been very snug and comfortable, before the 
trouble came. 

Then when they were sleeping through 
the short winter days, and prowling about 
the lake in the night in search of fresh 



28 Shaggycoat 



twigs or sticks that had been frozen into 
the ice, the trouble began. 

First there came the sound of pounding 
and soon there were holes in the ice near 
their supply of wood. Then occasionally a 
beaver who was hungry and had gone for 
breakfast was missed from the family or 
lodge where he lived. At first they thought 
he had gone for a swim on the lake and 
would soon come back, but when several 
had gone out to the winter's store and had 
not returned, the truth dawned upon some 
of the older and wiser beavers. Their forest 
lake had been invaded by some enemy, 
probably man, and one by one the colony 
was being slaughtered. 

There is but one thing to do at such a 
time and that is to take safety in flight, 
for the beaver does not consider that he can 
match his cunning against that of man. 

While the beavers were still considering 
whether to go at once or wait another day> 



Fugitives 29 

there were sounds of heavy blows upon the 
tops of their houses and then there was a 
loud explosion and the water began to fall. 
Then they fled in every direction, some 
taking refuge in the burrows that they had 
dug under the banks all along the lake for 
such an emergency, while others sought to 
leave the lake altogether ; some going up 
stream and some down. But the destruction 
of Beaver City had been planned very care- 
fully by their cunning enemy, man, and 
most of them perished while leaving the 
lake. 

When the men who were watching on the 
ice above saw a beaver swimming in the 
water under them, they would follow upon 
the ice, going just where the beaver went. 
The beaver would stay near the bottom of 
the lake as long as he could hold his breath, 
but finally he would have to come to the 
surface for air when the trapper would strike 
a hard blow upon the ice, stunning him, or 



30 / Shaggycoat 



perhaps killing him outright. Then he 
would cut a hole in the ice and fish out his 
unfortunate victim. 

It was from such perils as these, although 
they were not fully understood by the 
beavers, that Shaggycoat and his grand- 
father fled the second night of this reign of 
terror. They would gladly have gone in a 
larger company, with Shaggycoat's brothers 
and sisters and with his father and mother, 
but all the rest of their immediate family 
were missing and they never saw them 
again. 

They went in the inky night, before 
the moon had risen. Silently, like dark 
shadows, they glided along the bottom of the 
lake, which was still about half full of water, 
for the white man's thunder had not been 
able to entirely destroy the beaver's strong 
dam. 

Shaggy coat's grandfather, being very old, 
and wise according to his years, took the 



Fugitives 31 

lead, and the younger beaver followed, 
keeping close to the tail of his guide. They 
swam near the bottom and were careful to 
avoid the bright light of the great fires that 
men had built upon the ice in many places 
to prevent their escape. 

By the time the moon had risen they 
were near the upper end of the lake. They 
at once took refuge in an old burrow that 
the trappers had overlooked and lay still 
until the moon went under a cloud when 
they came out and crept along the bank, 
still going under the ice. When the moon 
appeared again they hid under the roots of 
a tree that made a sort of natural burrow. 
There they lay for all the world like the 
ends of two black logs, until a friendly 
cloud again obscured the moon when they 
pushed on. Once the trappers came very 
near to them when they were hiding behind 
some stones, waiting for a friendly cloud, 
and Shaggycoat was about to dash away and 



32 Shaggycoat 



betray their whereabouts, when his grand- 
father nipped him severely in the shoulder 
which kept him still, and alone saved his 
fine glossy coat. 

They were now getting well up into the 
river that had supplied their lake, and it 
was not so easy to find breathing places as 
it had been in the lake where the water was 
low. But they could usually find some 
crack or crevice or some point where there 
were a few inches between the water and the 
ice and where they could fill their lungs 
before they journeyed on. 

They had come so far and so fast that 
poor Shaggycoat's legs ached with the cease- 
less motion, but the older beaver gave him 
no rest, and led him on and on, swimming 
with easy, steady strokes. Although his 
own legs were weary and a bit rheumatic, 
he valued his life more than he did his legs 
and so set his teeth and breasted the current 
bravely. They both held their fore paws 



Fugitives 33 

close up under them and used their hind 
legs entirely for propelling themselves, so 
these had to do double duty, plying away 
like the screw wheel on a great steamer. 

When Shaggycoat remonstrated against 
going any farther, saying in beaver language 
that his legs were ready to drop off, his 
senior reminded him that his skin would 
drop off if they stopped, and, with a new 
wild terror tugging at his heart, he fled on. 

When daylight came, they had covered 
five good English miles up the river, and 
were nearly eight miles from their dam and 
the beautiful woodland lake that had been 
their home. 

Then the old beaver began looking for 
some* burrow or overhanging bank where 
they might hide during the day and get 
some sleep, of which they were in great 
need. Finally they found a suitable 
place where the bank had shelved in, leav- 
ing a natural den, high and dry above the 



34 Shaggycoat 



water. Here they rested and passed the day, 
getting nothing better to eat than a few 
frozen lily stems and some dead bark from 
a log that had been frozen into the ice. 
The dry lifeless bark was not much like the 
tender juicy bark that they were used to, 
but it helped a little to still the gnawings of 
hunger, and in this retreat they soon fell 
asleep and slept nearly the whole of the 
day. 

But the older beaver was always watch- 
ful, sleeping with one eye open, as you 
might say, and waking very easily. 

Once, when he was awakened by a sense 
of danger, he saw a large otter swim 
leisurely by their hiding-place and his 
heart beat hard and fast until he was out of 
sight, for he knew that if the otter dis- 
covered them, he would at once attack them 
and the battle would probably end in his 
favor. 

Shaggycoat would be of little help in a 



Fugitives 35 

real fight for life and the old beaver was far 
past his prime, his teeth being dull and 
broken. When the otter was out of sight, 
the watchman lay down and resumed his 
nap. 

When Shaggycoat awoke, he knew it was 
evening for he could plainly see the stars 
shining through the ice. 

His legs were cramped and stiff and there 
was a gnawing sensation in the region of his 
stomach, but there was nothing in sight to 
eat. His grandfather informed him in 
beaver language that there were weary 
miles to cover before they could rest again. 

As soon as it was fairly dark ? they came 
out from under the overhanging bank that 
had shielded them so nicely during the day 
and resumed their journey, swimming like 
two ocean liners, on and on. Their track 
was not as straight as that of the boats 
would have been, for they dodged in and 
out, going where the darker ice and project- 



36 Shaggycozt 



ing banks gave them cover, and stopping 
when they scented danger. 

When they had gone about a mile, they 
found a spot where the river had set back 
over the bank, freezing in some alder bushes. 
Upon the stems of these they made a scant 
meal and went on feeling a bit better. 
This night seemed longer and wearier to 
Shaggy coat than the first had. He was not 
so fresh and the first excitement was over, 
but the old beaver would not let him rest as 
he knew their only safety lay in putting a 
long distance between them and their 
destroyers. 

They were not so fortunate in finding a 
hiding-place as they had been the day be- 
fore, but they finally took refuge in a 
deserted otter's burrow, which made them a 
very good nest, although it was possible 
that some wandering otter might happen in, 
and dispossess them. 

When night again came round, they 



Fugitives 37 

made a light supper on frozen lily stems 
and pushed on. They covered less distance 
that night than they had done before, for 
both were feeling the strain of the long 
flight, and so they rested frequently and 
took more time to hunt for food. 

About daybreak of this third night of 
their journey, they found an open place in 
the ice where the stream was rapid and 
went ashore ; here they soon satisfied their 
hunger upon the bark of the poplar and 
birch. 

When they had made a good meal, the 
prudent old beaver, assisted by Shaggycoat, 
felled several small poplars and cutting 
them in pieces about three feet long 
dragged them under the ice to a protected 
bank and hid them against the time of 
need, for he had decided to spend a few 
days where they were, getting the rest and 
sleep which they both needed. 



CHAPTER II 
ALONE IN THE WORLD 



CHAPTER II 

ALONE IN THE WORLD 

For two or three weeks the beavers kept 
very quiet in their new retreat, only going 
out at night, which is their usual habit. 
They replenished their food of birch and 
poplar bark frequently by felling small sap- 
lings, cutting them up in pieces about three 
feet in length and then securing them 
under the ice. 

This was great fun for Shaggycoat, who 
had never done any work before and he 
loved to see the tall saplings come swishing 
down, but it was no fun for his grandfather 
who was getting very old. The long flight, 
the loss of sleep, and want of food, had been 
too much for him, and he did not recuper- 
ate as quickly as the two-year-old. 

One day just at dusk, Shaggycoat thought 



4-2 Shaggycoat 



he would steal out and fell a tree for him- 
self. His teeth fairly ached to be gnawing 
something, so he slipped away from his 
grandfather and paddled out to the open 
spot in the ice. Although he is a great 
swimmer and is only excelled by the otter, 
the beaver does not swim like other quad- 
rupeds, for he holds his forefeet up under 
him, and works his powerful hind legs like 
lightning. As the feet are broad and 
webbed and he strikes at a slight angle, he 
propels himself through the water with 
great velocity. 

As Shaggycoat neared the open place in 
the river where the water ran swiftly and 
it was easy to clamber out on the bank, a 
queer feeling came over him. 

He was not afraid to go out alone, al- 
though his grandfather had always gone 
with him. It was only a few steps and he 
thought nothing could harm him, but 
something seemed to hold him back and 



Alone in the World 43 

fill him with a sense of danger. Then he 
happened to glance up and, close to the 
opening in the ice, he saw a large gray ani- 
mal crouched, watching the hole intently. 

The stranger was two or three times the 
size of Shaggycoat, as large as any beaver 
he had ever seen, but he was not a beaver. 
His fore paws were too long and powerful, 
his head with tufted ears too flat, and his 
eyes were too cruel and hungry. The 
longer Shaggycoat looked at the fierce ani- 
mal above him on the ice, the greater grew 
his fear, until he fled at a headlong pace to 
the overhanging bank, where his grand- 
father was sleeping. His precipitate flight 
into the burrow awoke the old beaver who 
slept lightly and was always watchful. 

When Shaggycoat related his adventure, 
the old beaver looked troubled and combed 
his head thoughtfully with the claws upon 
his hind leg. After dusk had fallen and 
the stars appeared, he carefully reconnoi- 



44 Shaggycozt 



tred, leaving Shaggy coat in the burrow. 
After half an hour's time, he returned and 
his manner was anxious. 

He told Shaggycoat that they must not 
use the opening in the ice any more or go 
upon the land, for a lynx had found their 
hiding-place and would watch by their front 
door until he dined upon beaver meat. They 
must start that very night and go farther up 
the river and find a new opening, and even 
then they must be cautious. This was sor- 
rowful news for them both and the younger 
beaver remonstrated against leaving their 
fine store of bark, but he got a sharp nip in his 
ear and was told to keep his advice until it 
w r as asked for. So, after making a hearty 
supper, they went sorrowfully upon their 
way to find a new open spot in the river 
where the lynx would not be watching for 
them. 

They went only about a mile that night, 
but found several open spots for the ice was 



Alone in the World 45 

getting ready to break up. At last, they 
found a place that suited them and dragged 
themselves up under a sheltering bank, near 
a rapid, that afforded them a chance to go 
in search of food. Then the old beaver 
slept long and sound, leaving Shaggy coat 
upon guard with orders to wake him if any- 
thing uncommon appeared. 

The young beaver did not like these silent 
vigils and the hours seemed very long to 
him, but he did as he was told. He 
thought his grandfather never would wake, 
but at last he did, late in the afternoon, but 
they did not go ashore for bark — it was too 
dangerous, the older beaver said — so they 
had a slim supper of frozen lily pads. But 
this was not enough for the hungry stomach 
of Shaggy coat who gnawed away at some tree 
roots that pierced the bank where they were 
hiding. It was not as good as the fresh bark 
of the birch, but it filled him up and made 
him feel better. 



46 Shaggycoat 



If Shaggycoat had been older and wiser, 
he would have been alarmed at the old 
beaver's symptoms, but he was young and 
thoughtless, and knew not of age, or the 
signs of failing life. 

At last the spring freshet came and the 
ice in the river broke up. Then they had 
to look for a spot where the bank was very 
high so they would not be drowned out, 
It was a long and arduous search to find the 
right spot, but at last it was found just in 
time, for the old beaver's strength was nearly 
spent. But every day that the snow 
melted and the ice went out of the river, 
food for the beavers grew more plentiful 
and the sunshine and hope of spring made 
them glad. 

Shaggycoat was now left to himself, to 
swim in the river and feed upon the bark 
of saplings along the shore. The old beaver 
was too tired with their long journey to ven- 
ture out of the burrow they had chosen. 



Alone in the World 47 

He gave Shaggycoat much good advice, and 
among other things told him to always keep 
close to the water where he was compara- 
tively safe, while upon land, he was the 
easy prey of all his natural enemies. The 
peculiar angle of his hind legs made it impos- 
sible for him, or any other beaver, to travel 
much on shore, but, while in the water they 
were his safeguard. 

These were delightful days for the two- 
year-old. The water was getting warm and 
the mere act of swimming filled him with 
delight. Besides, it seemed like a very won- 
derful world in which he lived. He had 
come so far and seen so many strange 
things. He wondered if there were other 
rjvers and if they were all as long as this 
one. 

One spring morning when the air was 
warm and balmy and birds had begun to 
sing in the tree-tops along the bank, 
Shaggycoat went for a swim in a deep pool. 



48 Shaggycozt 



It was not his custom to be abroad in the 
daylight, for beavers as a rule love the dark 
and do most of their work in inky darkness, 
but the two-year-old felt restless. He must 
be stirring. His grandfather was too old 
and stupid for him, so he went. 

He had a delightful play and a good 
breakfast upon some alders that grew in a 
little cove. He stayed much longer than 
usual, so that when he returned the sun was 
low in the west. 

He found his grandfather stretched out 
much as he had left him, but there was 
something peculiar about him. He was so 
still. He was not sleeping, for there was 
no motion of the chest and no steam from 
the nostrils. Shaggycoat went up to him 
and put his nose to his, but it was quite 
cold. Then he poked him gently with his 
paw, but he did not stir. Then he nipped 
his ear as the older beaver had so frequently 
done to him, but there was no response. 



Alone in the World 49 

He would wait ; perhaps this was a new 
kind of sleep. He would probably wake in 
the morning, but a strange uneasiness filled 
Shaggycoat. He was almost afraid of his 
grandfather, for he was so quiet and his 
nose was so cold. 

He waited an hour or two and then tried 
to waken him again, but with no better 
success. This time to touch the icy nose of 
the old beaver sent a chill through Shaggy- 
coat's every nerve, and a sudden terror of 
the lifeless silent thing before him seized 
him. 

Then a sense of loss, coupled with a great 
fear, came over him and he fled from the 
burrow like a hunted creature. He must 
put as many miles as possible between him- 
self and that sleep from which there was no 
waking. 

The river had never seemed so dark and 
uninviting before, nor held so many terrors. 
His grandfather had always led the way 



So Shaggycoat 



and he had merely to follow. Now he was 
to lead. But where? He did not know 
the way, but that silence and the terror of 
that stiff form with the cold nose haunted 
him and he fled on. 

Morning found him many miles from the 
shelving bank, where the old beaver had 
been left behind. 

Shaggycoat feared the river and all it con- 
tained. The world too was strange to him, 
but most of all he feared that silent form 
under the dark bank. 

From that day he became a wanderer in 
the great world. He went by river courses 
and through mountain lakes, always keep- 
ing out of danger as well as he could. 

Many scraps of good advice he now re- 
membered which had been given him by 
his grandfather. Perhaps his grandfather 
had felt the heavy sleep coming upon him 
and had given the advice that Shaggycoat 
might take care of himself when he should 



Alone in the World 51 

be left alone ; or maybe it was only an in- 
stinct that had come down through many 
generations of aquatic builders. But cer- 
tain things he did and others he refrained 
from doing, because something told him 
that it would be dangerous. 

Other bits of information he gathered 
from sad experience. Many things befell 
him that probably never would, had he 
been in company with wiser heads, but, he 
was an orphan, and the lot of the orphan is 
always hard. 

These are a few of the lessons that he 
learned during that adventurous summer : 
that the water is the beaver's element, but 
on land he is the laughing-stock of all who 
behold him ; that in the water is compara- 
tive safety, but on land are many dangers ; 
that the otter is the beaver's deadly enemy, 
always to be avoided if possible ; that minks 
and muskrats are harmless little creatures, 
but not suitable company for a self-respect- 



52 Shaggycoat 



ing beaver; that sweet-smelling meat, for 
which you do not have to work, is danger- 
ous and bites like a clam, holding on even 
more persistently. 

These and other things too numerous to 
mention Shaggycoat learned, some by ob- 
servation and some by personal experience. 

At first, the summer passed quickly. 
There were so many things to see, and so 
many rivers and lakes to visit, but by de- 
grees a sense of loneliness came over him. 
He had no friend, no companion. 

He was positively alone in all the great 
world. 



CHAPTER III 
THE COURTSHIP OF SHAGGYCOAT 



CHAPTER III 

THE COURTSHIP OF SHAGGYCOAT 

My young readers may wonder why I 
have called the beaver, whose fortunes we 
are following, Shaggycoat, so I will tell 
them. 

The fur of the beaver and the otter is 
very thick and soft, but, in its natural state, 
it is quite different from what it is when 
worn by women in cloaks and coats, for 
the fine short fur is sprinkled with long 
hairs that give the coat a shaggy, uneven 
appearance. In the case of our own beaver, 
Shaggycoat, these long hairs were very pro- 
nounced, so you see the name fitted him 
nicely. 

When the fur of any of these little ani- 
mals is prepared for market, the long hairs 



56 Shaggycoat 



are all pulled out with a small pair of 
tweezers. This is called plucking the 
skin. 

As the summer days went by and August 
ripened into September, the loneliness that 
had oppressed Shaggycoat during the sum- 
mer grew tenfold and he became more rest- 
less than ever. There seemed to be some- 
thing for which he was looking and long- 
ing. It was not right that he should 
wander up and down lakes and streams and 
have no living creatures to stop to speak 
with him. His world was too large ; the 
lakes and streams were too endless. He 
wanted to share them with somebody or 
something. He had found many a won- 
drous water nook, which he would like to 
show some one ; but still up and down he 
wandered, and no one did he find to share 
his great world. Yet it seemed sometimes 
as though he had come near to somebody 
or something, for which he was looking, 



The Courtship of Shaggycoat 57 

but it always vanished at the next turn of 
the stream or at the waterfall. 

Thus in this endless searching that came 
to naught, like searching for the pot of gold 
at the end of the rainbow, the autumn days 
passed. 

The maples and the oaks shook out their 
crimson and golden streamers, and a touch 
of surpassing glory was on all the world. 
Sometimes the merry wind would shower 
down maple leaves until the edge of the 
stream was as bright as the boughs above. 

It seemed that their fire touched Shaggy- 
coat as he swam among them, making him 
burn and glow like the autumn forest. 

Then a new plan came into his w r ise head. 
If what he was looking for could not be 
found by searching, perhaps it might be 
coaxed to come to him. He would try and 
see. So he gathered some grass and mud 
and made a very queer patty, which looked 
much like a child's mud pie. This he 



58 Shaggycoat 



smoothed off with as much care as a baker 
would a cream cake. 

This patty had been made by a beaver. 
He was sure that whoever found it would 
know that, for it had a strong musky smell, 
so he left his love-letter under a bush near 
a watercourse, and went away to wait de- 
velopments. 

A day he waited, but his letter remained 
unopened, and, of course, unread. Two 
days, and no better result, but the third 
day he found to his great joy that the letter 
had been opened. There was an unmis- 
takable beaver musk about it, and new paw 
and nose prints upon it. 

This was his answer. It said as plainly 
as words could have said, " I have read 
your letter and know what it means. I am 
waiting in some pool, or under a shelving 
bank near-by. Come." 

Then Shaggycoat raced up and down the 
stream churning the water like a tug boat, 



The Courtship of Shaggycoat 59 

until he found fresh beaver tracks in the 
mud. These he followed rapidly along the 
bank until he came to where it overhung 
the water and there he found his mate 
waiting for him with glad eyes. 

Shaggycoat went up to her and rubbed 
his nose against hers. It was not like his 
grandfather's nose, cold and repellent, but 
warm and caressing. He backed away a 
pace or two to look at her and there was 
new joy in his heart. 

She was not quite as large as he, and her 
coat was just a shade lighter drab, but she 
was very sleek and Shaggycoat was well 
satisfied. 

I know not what they said there under 
the shelving bank, during their first tryst, 
but I do not agree with those niggardly 
naturalists who would strip the brute king- 
dom of feeling and intelligence and the 
power to express joy and pain, and appro- 
priate all these feelings to themselves. 



6o Shaggycoat 



It may be that Shaggycoat told his newly 
found mate how bright her eyes were and 
how long he had searched for her or per- 
haps she confessed that she had seen him 
many times just around the bend in the 
stream, but had not thought that he was 
looking for her. We are none of us certain 
of any of these things, but we are sure of 
one thing. It was a very happy meeting. 

Then Shaggycoat led the way through 
lake and river to many wonderful water 
grottoes ; to deep pools where the bottom 
of the lake was as dark and forbidding as 
midnight, or to shallows, where the bottom 
of the stream was gay with bright pebbles, 
and where the sunlight danced upon the 
uneven water until it made a wondrous 
many colored mirror. 

He showed her his waterfall, and a part 
of a small dam that he had constructed 
just for fun across a little brook. The 
waterfall was not really his any more than 



The Courtship of Shaggy coat 61 

it was any one else's, but he called it 
his. 

These and many other water wonders he 
showed his young mate, and her eyes grew 
brighter as the wonders of their world grew. 
She wondered how he had traveled so far, 
and seen so many things. But all the time 
Shaggycoat was leading the way toward a 
dear little brook that he knew of away 
back in the wilderness, in one of the fast- 
nesses of nature. He had a definite plan 
in his head concerning this stream. He 
had made it weeks before and arranged 
many of its details. But one day as they 
journeyed, a sad accident befell Brighteyes, 
and for a time it bade fair to end all their 
hopes. 

They were swimming leisurely up stream 
and had stopped at the mouth of a little 
rill where the water was very fresh, when 
Brighteyes discovered a stick of sweet 
smelling birch hanging just above the 



62 Shaggycoat 



water's edge. It fairly made her mouth 
water. 

But Shaggycoat was suspicious. He had 
seen wood fixed like this before. He had 
tasted it and something had caught him by 
the paw, and only after several hours of 
wrenching had he been able to free him- 
self. Even then he had left one claw and 
a part of the toe in the trap. 

So he pushed Brighteyes from the trap 
and tried to hurry away with her. But, 
with true feminine wilfulness and curios- 
ity, she persisted, and a moment later the 
trap was sprung and she was held fast by 
the toes of one of her forefeet. 

She tugged and twisted, pulled and 
turned in every direction, but it would not 
let go. Then Shaggycoat got hold of the 
chain with his teeth and pulled too, but 
with no better success. 

Brighteyes struggled until her paw was 
nearly wrenched from the shoulder, but the 



The Courtship of Shaggycozt 63 

persistent thing that held her by three toes 
still clung like a vise. 

At last when both beavers were filled 
with despair, and a wild terror of being 
held so firmly had seized them, a bright 
idea came to Shaggycoat. He gnawed off 
the stake that held the chain upon the trap 
and his mate was free to go, with the trap 
still clinging to her paw, and the chain rat- 
tling along upon the stones. Then they 
tried all sorts of experiments to get the trap 
off, the two most ingenious ways being 
drowning it, and burying it in the mud, 
and then seeking to steal away quietly 
without disturbing it. But the trap was 
not to be taken unawares in this way, and 
always followed. Finally it caught be- 
tween two stones where the brook was shal- 
low, and came off itself. You may imagine 
they were glad to see the last of it, and 
Brighteyes never forgot the lesson. 

It was several days before her shoulder 



64 Shaggycoat 



got fairly over the wrenching, but it 
may have saved her glossy coat in after 
years. 

Finally, after traveling leisurely for about 
a week, they came to the mountain stream 
that Shaggycoat had in mind. It wound 
through a broad alder covered meadow, 
with steep foothills a mile or so back on 
either side. The meadow was about two 
miles long and at the lower end, where the 
stream ran into a narrow valley, there were 
two large pines, one on either bank. 

Up in the foothills were innumerable 
birch and maple saplings and here and 
there in the meadow were knolls of higher 
land, covered with small pines and spruces. 

Perhaps Shaggycoat had seen this wild 
meadow covered with water in the spring 
during a freshet, or maybe he had only 
imagined it, but there was a picture in his 
active mind of a strong beaver dam at the 
foot of the narrows and a broad lake that 



The Courtship of Shaggycoat 65 

should be enclosed by the foothills ; upon 
the islands were to be many beaver lodges, 
the first of which should be occupied by 
Brighteyes and himself. 



CHAPTER IV 
HOW THE GREAT DAM WAS BUILT 



CHAPTER IV 

HOW THE GREAT DAM WAS BUILT 

Shaggycoat, of course, had had no ex- 
perience in dam-building, but he had often 
watched repairs upon the dam in the colony 
where he and his grandfather lived, before 
that terrible winter and the destruction of 
their snug city. He was too young at the 
time to be allowed to help in such impor- 
tant work as strengthening the dam, which 
needed old and wise heads, but there was 
no rule against his watching and seeing 
how it was done. 

He had planned to model his dam in the 
alder meadow after the one at the old 
colony. 

He had traveled many weary miles by 
lakes and rivers, to find a spot where such 



70 Shaggycoat 



a dam could be built. A broad meadow 
surrounded by foothills, with a narrow neck 
at the lower end where the dam was to be, 
and large trees near to use in its construc- 
tion. There were many places where the 
ordinary dams, made of short sections of 
logs, piled up like a cob house, could be 
built. The brush and stone dam could also 
be made almost anywhere, but the kind 
Shaggycoat wanted, which was easier to 
make than any other could be built only in 
certain places, so he had chosen the spot 
with great care. 

His observation of repairs on the old dam 
would stand him in good stead, but even 
had he not seen this work, it is probable 
that his beaver's building instinct would 
have supplied the needed knowledge. His 
kind had been dam builders for ages. 

It was the beaver dams of the eighteenth 
century that gave us most of our pleasant 
meadows, where hay and crops now grow 



Ho<w the Great Dam was Built 71 

so plentifully. Originally these lowlands 
were covered with timber, but the beaver 
dams overflowed the valleys, and made 
them fertile. This also killed off the tim- 
ber, which finally rotted and fell into the 
water, and the meadow was cleared as 
effectually as though the settlers had done 
it with their axes. Traces of these dams 
may still be found. 

Just to illustrate how ingrained the build- 
ing instinct is in the beaver : a young beaver 
was held in captivity in the third story of 
an apartment house in London. There 
were no sticks, no mud, nor anything to 
suggest building. He had no parents to 
teach him this industry, yet he soon set to 
work and built brushes, shoes, hassocks, 
and anything else movable that he could 
get hold of into a wall across one corner of 
the room. This was his dam. 

One October evening, when the harvest 
moon was at its full and its mellow radiance 



72 Shaggycozt 



shimmered on tree-top and water, and the 
world was like a beautiful dream, half in 
light, half in shadow, Shaggyeoat and 
Brighteyes took their places at the foot of 
one of the great pines at the lower end of 
the meadow and the work of dam-building 
began. But just how they set to work you 
could never guess, unless you are familiar 
with the habits of these most interesting 
animals. 

They stood upon their hind legs, bal- 
ancing themselves nicely upon their broad 
flat tails, and began nipping a ring about 
the tree. It was not a very deep cut, and 
looked for all the world like the girdle that 
the nurseryman makes upon his apple trees, 
only it was a little more ragged. When the 
tree had been circled, they began again 
about three inches above the first girdle, 
and cut another. When they touched noses 
again at the farther side of the tree, they 
began pulling out the chips between the 



How the Great Dam <was Built 73 

two girdles. When this operation had been 
completed for the entire circumference of 
the tree, they had made the first cut which 
was about three inches broad, and perhaps 
a half an inch deep, for they had the bark 
to help them, and this was the easiest cut 
on the tree. 

Do you imagine that they stopped for a 
frolic when the first cut had been made, as 
many boys or girls would have done ? Not 
a bit of it, for they knew better than man 
could have told them how soon cold weather 
would make work upon the dam impossi- 
ble, and there was the lodge to build after 
the dam had been made. 

You would have laughed if you had seen 
these two comparatively small animals at 
the foot of that giant pine, nipping away at 
it like persistent little wood-choppers. The 
old tree was tall and majestic. It had with- 
stood the winds of a century, and its heart 
was still stout. The chips that they took 



74 Shaggycoat 



were so small, and the task before them so 
great, but, if you had happened by the fol- 
lowing day and seen the furrow, some two 
or three inches in depth, you would have 
marveled, and not been so sure of the old 
pine's ability to withstand these ambitious 
rodents. 

Night after night they worked, and once 
or twice they had to widen the cut, which 
had become so narrow that they could not 
get their heads in to work, but, even as 
water wears away stone by constant action, 
they wore away the stout heart of the old 
pine. 

At last, one morning, just as the moon 
was setting and the pale stars were fading, 
a shudder ran through the tall pine and 
it quivered as they cut through the last- 
fibres of its strong heart. A moment it 
tottered like an old man upon his staff, 
then swayed, as though uncertain which 
way to go, and fell with a rush of wind and 



How the Great Dam was Built 75 

a roar that resounded from foothill to foot- 
hill until the meadow echoed with the 
downfall of the old sentinel. 

It had fallen squarely across the stream, 
just as they had hoped. This was probably 
not through any prowess of the beavers as 
woodsmen, but nearly all timber that grows 
upon the bank of a stream leans toward the 
water, owing to the fact that trees grow 
more freely upon that side. 

The sun was now rising, so they left 
their work, well pleased that the tree was 
down, but by dusk they were at it again. 

The trunk of the pine, and particularly 
its thick foliage, had dammed the water 
somewhat, so it was already beginning to 
set back, but most of it trickled through 
and went upon its way rejoicing at its es- 
cape. Some large limbs upon the tree still 
held it several feet from the ground, so 
they set to work on the under side of the 
tree, cutting off the limbs and lowering the 



76 Shaggycoat 



trunk to just the height they wished. 
Some of this work had to be done under 
water, but that is no hardship for a beaver, 
for he can stay under several minutes. 
When breathing had become difficult they 
would come up, bringing the severed limbs 
in their teeth. These would be jammed 
into the mud just in front of the tree trunk, 
like the pickets upon a fence. If you had 
tried to pull out one of these limbs after 
they had once planted it, you would have 
found it a difficult task. 

In two nights they lowered the pine to 
the desired height, and made it look like a 
dam. 

The following night, they began upon the 
other pine on the opposite bank, and girdled 
it as they had done the first. The tree 
looked lonely now with its mate gone. 
Perhaps it felt so and did not care that the 
sharp teeth were nipping away at its bark, 
or maybe it still longed to battle with the 



How the Great Dam was Built 77 

elements, and this spasmodic pain in its sap 
filled it with forebodings. 

As relentlessly as they had gnawed away 
at the first tree, they worked at the second 
until it, too, fell with a rush of air, the 
snap of breaking branches and a thunder- 
ous thud that shook the valley. They were 
not as fortunate this time as they had been 
before and though the pine fell across the 
stream, it fell further up than its mate, leav- 
ing a gap between them. 

You could never guess how they remedied 
this mishap. They certainly could not 
move the tree, but that was really what 
they did, for they gnawed off the limbs that 
supported it on the down-stream side, and 
it rolled over of its own weight, so that in 
this way the gap was filled. The structure 
now looked quite like the outline of a dam. 

Then work upon it was suspended for a 
time and they went up-stream about twenty 
rods and dug three holes in a knoll that 



78 Shaggy co at 



would soon be an island, for the reason that 
the water was now setting back quite rap- 
idly. These holes were started near the 
bank of the stream running back under 
ground for several feet, and then turning 
upward and coming out at the surface. 
Three such holes were dug, each leading to 
a different place near the bank of the 
stream, but all coming out at the same spot 
at the top of the knoll. 

They soon resumed work upon the dam 
and small trees and brush might have been 
seen floating down the stream, guided by 
industrious beavers, who gave the material 
a shove here and a push there to keep it in 
the current. Now that the dam was be- 
ginning to flow the meadows, they would 
make the stream do their carrying just as 
it did cargoes for man. 

The brush and saplings were stuck vertic- 
ally in front of the pine barricade, and the 
holes between were plastered up with mud 



How the Great Dam was Built 79 

and sods, until the structure was fairly tight. 
The mud they carried in their fore paws 
hugged up under the chin, or on the broad 
tail which made a fine trowel with which 
to smooth it off. 

Little by little the holes on the dam were 
filled, until finally it was quite smooth and 
symmetrical. It could be built larger and 
stronger the next year, but for this year 
they only needed a small pond that should 
make a primitive Venice for them, and 
shield their lodge from a land attack. By 
the time the first hard freeze came, the 
dam had been completed for that year, and 
the freeze strengthened it just as they had 
intended. 

A beautiful little lake about a quarter of 
a mile in length, and half as wide, now 
shimmered and sparkled in the valley and 
the beavers were glad that they had been 
so prospered. 



CHAPTER V 
A BEAVER LODGE 



CHAPTER V 

A BEAVER LODGE 

It will be remembered that before begin- 
ning work on the dam the beavers went to a 
point a few rods above where it was to be 
placed and dug three holes running back 
from the stream. These holes started at 
different points in the bank but all con- 
verged at the top of the knoll. 

The water had now set back and covered 
the lower end of the holes near the stream, 
but the opening at the top of the knoll was 
high and dry. 

The beavers now set to work with mud, 
sticks, stones, fine brush, and weeds, and 
built a circular wall about eight feet in di- 
ameter around the hole at the top of the 
knoll. The wall was about two feet thick 



84 Shaggycoat 



and during the first two or three days of 
building looked for all the world like the 
snow fort that children build by rolling huge 
snowballs into a circular wall, and then 
plastering in the cracks with loose snow, 
only the beavers' work was more regular 
and symmetrical than that of the children. 

It was now the first of November and 
freezing a little each night ; just the best 
time imaginable for a beaver to work upon 
his house, for it w^as really a house that the 
beavers were building. 

While the November sky was bright with 
stars, and the milky way was luminous ; 
while the frost scaled over the edges of their 
little pond, and the fresh north winds rap- 
idly stripped the forest of its last leaves, the 
beavers worked upon their house with that 
industry which is proverbial of them. 

They brought mud in their paws or on 
their broad flat tails, and sticks and brush 
in their teeth and plastered away like skil- 



A Beaver Lodge 85 

ful masons. When a pile of mud had been 
placed in the proper position, it would be 
smoothed off carefully with the patient fore 
paws or perhaps that broad strong tail 
would come down upon it with a resound- 
ing slap and the trick was done. 

When the wall began to round over for 
the roof, the difficulty began. Here they 
had to put in rafters. These were formed of 
pliable sticks of alder or willow, one end 
being stuck in the mud wall, and the other 
bent over at the top, until all came together 
where the chimney would be just like the 
poles in an Indian's wigwam. Here they 
also had to use great care in placing the 
mud, for it would frequently fall through 
between the rafters, or slide down upon 
them. If they could work, when it was 
freezing, the cold froze the mud to the raft- 
ers and helped to keep it in place. Several 
times, part of the roof fell in and had to be 
relaid, but they still worked away and, 



86 Shaggycoai 



finally, all but a very small opening, two or 
three inches in diameter, had been closed. 
This opening was the vent or chimney, 
where foul air might escape. This hole had 
to be just large enough to permit the escape 
of hot air, but not large enough to admit 
any of their enemies. 

The same night that the final touches 
were put upon the roof of this curious dome- 
shaped house, the ground froze hard, and 
in the morning the wall of Mr. and Mrs. 
Beaver's new abode was quite substantial. 
But later on when the hard freeze had made 
the earth like rock, this little mud house 
would be a veritable fortress, capable of with- 
standing almost any onset with ordinary 
weapons. Even a man with a crowbar and 
axe would have found it a hard task to en- 
ter this stronghold of these queer little peo- 
ple. 

So you see the beaver had planned his 
work well and the frost and the wind had 




The final touches were put upon this curious dome- 
shaped HOUSE 



A Beaver Lodge 87 

helped him. He had harnessed the stream 
to do his work, and made its water protect 
him from his enemies. Just as men built 
their castles in days of old, the beaver had 
made his dam, so that a moat should sur- 
round his house, where the drawbridge 
should always be up, and the only way of 
entrance or exit should be by water. 

You may wonder how after the roof of 
their house had been closed up, and no door 
left, the beavers went to and from their 
dwelling, but do you not remember the 
three holes that had been dug several weeks 
before. These were now their three sub- 
merged channels to the outer world, 
through which only a good swimmer could 
pass. This was the way they went. A 
plunge down the hole at the centre of the 
lodge, and a dark form would shoot out at 
the bank of the river. Perhaps a beaver's 
head, dripping with water would be poked 
up, only a few feet from the mud house, or 



88 Shaggycoat 



maybe they would go the entire width of 
the pond before coming to the surface, for 
they are great swimmers, and can stay 
down for several minutes without coming to 
the surface to breathe. 

Besides having three doors through which 
to escape to their water world, the beavers 
took other precautions against being en- 
trapped in their snug house, or caught in 
the pond without a place of refuge to flee 
to. 

They searched the bank for places where 
it was steep or shelving, overhanging the 
water. At such points they dug burrows 
back into the bank, gradually running them 
upward, but stopping a foot or two short of 
the surface. Here they would scoop out a 
snug burrow or nest to which they could 
retreat when living in the house became 
dangerous. They made three or four such 
burrows, the lower end of each being under 
water, and the nest end high and dry, but 



A Beaver Lodge 89 

still underground. By this time they felt 
that their pond was fairly well fortified, 
and they set to work, laying in their winter 
store of food, for they knew that the pond 
would soon freeze over thus making them 
prisoners under the ice for the entire winter, 
so they must make their plans accordingly. 

They went to the upper end of the pond 
and began felling birch, poplar and maple 
saplings, three or four inches in diameter. 
These small trees they limbed out, and cut 
up into pieces about three feet in length, 
just as a wood-chopper would cut cord 
wood. 

When a tree had been cut up into these 
convenient pieces, one of the beavers would 
load it upon the shoulders of the other, 
who would cling to the stick with his teeth, 
and they would begin dragging it to the 
water. The beaver usually went obliquely, 
dragging the stick after him, with one end 
trailing. When it had been rolled into the 



90 Shaggycoat 



water, it was left to the current which they 
knew would float it down to the dam. If 
the channel became blocked and logs 
lodged along the shore, they pushed them 
off like the good logmen they were. 

It took two or three weeks to cut the 
winter's supply of wood, which was not for 
fuel but food. All the logs had been 
floated down to the dam and secured under 
water near the lodge, when the great freeze 
came. It was quite difficult to make the 
sticks stay under water, but this they 
managed to do in several ways. Some of 
them they thrust into the mud, while 
others were secured under roots, and a 
large pile was made safe at the dam by 
thrusting one stick under another and 
allowing the top sticks to keep the under 
ones down. 

One clear, crisp night, about the first of 
December, the North Wind awoke and came 
galloping over the frozen fields, bringing 



A Beaver Lodge 91 

with him legions of frost folks. The fingers 
of these myriad little people were like 
icicles, and everything that they touched 
was congealed. They found the beavers' 
pond, and danced a merry dance over the 
sparkling water, and every time that they 
stooped to touch the clear water, crystals 
of ice formed and spread in every direction. 

It had been a very pleasant autumn, but 
the North Wind was angry to-night, and he 
howled like a demon, and smote lake and 
river with his icy mittens, so that when 
the sun rose next morning, lakes and streams 
were cased in a glittering armor of ice and 
the beavers were prisoners for the winter. 

For the next four or five months they 
would live under ice, but they did not care 
about that. It was what they had planned 
and worked for for weeks. They were 
snugly housed with plenty of tender bark 
for their winter's food, so the wind might 
howl, and the frost freeze. It would only 



gi Shaggycoat 



strengthen their barricade and make them 
more secure against the outer world. 

In their thick-walled house it was quite 
snug. The heat of their bodies made it 
warm and the vent at the top carried off 
the foul air. Whenever they were tired of 
confinement, they would go for a swim in 
the pond through one of the three sub- 
marine passages, just as though the pond 
had not been frozen over. The only care 
that they needed to exercise was to look out 
that these holes did not ice over and thus 
lock them in their lodge like rats in a trap. 
To prevent this, they broke the ice frequently 
with their tails during cold days. Some 
cold nights they were obliged to watch the 
holes for hours to prevent them from freez- 
ing. 

It was twilight of a bleak December day. 
The sun had taken his accustomed plunge 
behind the western horizon, but still shone 
blood red upon the clouds above the gray 



A Beaver Lodge 93 

hills. There was still light enough from 
the afterglow to cast shadows, and phantom 
shapes peopled the aisles of the forest, or 
stretched their long arms across the fields. 

The moon was just rising in the east, 
and it made shadows and shapes uncanny 
and unearthly. Already the heavens were 
studded with stars, and the wind moaned 
fitfully, rattling down snow and ice and 
whistling in the leafless twigs. 

Down from the foothills, coming like a 
wary hunter, a wildcat prowled to the edge 
of the beavers' pond. A part of the way 
he had followed a rabbit's track, but it had 
proved so old that he had finally given it 
up. When he hurried he moved by quick 
jumps, bringing down all four feet at a time 
quite close together, and leaving those four 
telltale paw-prints in a bunch that hunters 
know so well. When he wanted to be more 
cautious, he walked cat-like, setting his fore 
paw down as softly as though his foot were 



94 Shaggycoat 



velvet. He was an ugly looking brute, 
rather heavily built, with a thick head, and 
square topped club ears that usually lay 
back close to his head. His visage was 
generously sprinkled with whiskers, but it 
was accented by two hungry yellow green 
eyes, that seemed almost phosphorescent. 
His habitual expression was a snarl. 

At the edge of the beaver pond, he tried 
the wind this way and that. His nostrils 
dilated, his eyes snapped fire, and his stump 
of a tail twitched. There was game abroad. 
He knew that scent of old. It was quite 
common away to the north from whence he 
had wandered. Cautiously he crept forward, 
putting down his paws in the dainty cat-like 
manner ; but he must have known that the 
beavers were out of his reach at this time of 
year. Perhaps his hunger made him forget- 
ful or he may have looked for the unex- 
pected. 

Half-way across the pond he stopped and 



A Beaver Lodge 95 

sniffed again ; it was close at hand now. 
Then he noticed the conical house on the 
island near, and crept cautiously toward it. 
Twice he walked about the house, which 
was now partly covered with snow, then with 
one jump he landed upon the very dome of 
the beavers' dwelling and peeked in at the 
air hole. What he saw made saliva drip 
from his mouth and his eyes dilate. There 
within three feet of his death-dealing paws 
were a pair of sleek beavers, warm and 
cozy. The hot scent fairly ravished his 
nostrils. It was unendurable, and he tore at 
the frozen mud house like a fury, first with 
his fore paws, then with his powerful hind 
paws armed with one of the best set of claws 
in the New England woods. But it was as 
hard as a stone wall and the beavers might 
just as well have been miles away as far as 
he was concerned. 

Then the wildcat peeked in again, and 
ungovernable rage seized him. He reared 



96 Shaggycoat 



upon his haunches, and beat the air with 
his fore paws and howled and shrieked like 
a demon. The beavers started from their 
twilight nap with sudden terror. This 
fury that was tearing at their house and 
filling the night with awful sounds seemed 
almost upon their very backs, so they fled 
precipitately through the water passages 
into the pond and took refuge in one of the 
burrows along the bank. 

A moment later when the wildcat again 
peeped in at the vent, the house was quite 
empty. Then after a few more futile efforts 
to break through the frozen walls he went 
away, going from bush to bush, alert and 
watchful. Only the tracks remained to tell 
that the beavers had had so unwelcome a 
caller. 




Vfy 



Tearing at their house and filling the night with 
awful sounds 



CHAPTER VI 
HOW THE WINTER WENT 



CHAPTER VI 

HOW THE WINTER WENT 

December came and went, and the first 
of the new year found the beavers snugly 
caught beneath a barricade of six inches of 
ice. The water from the little brook that 
fed their pond was very clear, so that the 
ice was as transparent as glass. This ena- 
bled them to see what was going on outside 
almost as well as they could before the ice 
had formed, and besides, it kept out the 
wind and the cold. 

You may wonder at this, and think that 
no place on earth could be colder than the 
bottom of an ice-bound pond ; but I am sure 
that a thermometer under water would have 
registered much higher temperature than 
one above, for if this were not so, the water 
would freeze solid to the bottom. 

1.0FC. 



ioo Shaggy coat 



Did you ever have your playmates bury 
you in the snow just for fun? The snow 
looks cold, and seems uninviting, but once 
snugly tucked away in it, it is quite a warm 
white blanket. People of northern latitudes 
frequently save their lives, when caught out 
in a cold storm, by covering themselves in 
the snow. In the same manner the dog 
teams in Alaska pass the bitter cold nights 
of an arctic winter buried in the snow. So 
the ice made the beavers 7 pond snug in the 
same manner. 

Besides being warmed by its coating of 
ice, the frost folks had also made the pond 
very beautiful. Wherever there was an 
uneven spot in the ice, the sunlight was 
broken into a wonderful rainbow prism of 
dazzling colors, that showed more plainly 
under the ice than above. There were 
green, blue, opal, and many shades of light 
red, all of which made a beautiful roof for 
the beavers' winter palace. 



How the Winter Went 101 

In addition to this, all the grasses and 
reeds along the edge of the pond were 
gemmed with ice-diamonds. These glob- 
ules of ice caught the sun's rays, and in 
many cases refracted them as brilliantly as 
real diamonds would have done. In all the 
little inlets where reeds and flags had been 
frozen into the ice, the frost folks had 
played queer pranks, so that the pond was 
a most beautiful place, as well as a very 
snug one. 

The phrase " as busy as a beaver " was 
anything but descriptive of their life now, 
for they did little but sleep and eat bark. 
They had provided well for these cold 
months, and now they had nothing to do 
but enjoy themselves. I am inclined to 
think that the maxim about working like 
a beaver only applies to two or three 
months in the autumn, for the rest of the 
year the beaver is a very lazy fellow. All 
through the winter months he sleeps in his 



io2 Shaggycoat 



snug house, or nibbles away at his store of 
bark. Then, as soon as the ice breaks up, 
all the male beavers over three years of 
age start on their annual wanderings 
through lakes and streams. There is no 
particular object in this quest, but it is just 
a nomadic habit, an impulse that stirs in 
the blood, as soon as the sap starts in the 
maple, and keeps them moving until some 
time in September. 

One day must have been very much like 
another under their covering of ice. In- 
side the lodge, the diameter was three or 
four feet and about the same in height. 
Each beaver has his own particular bed, 
which he always occupies, and the house is 
kept very neat and clean. I do not imag- 
ine there was much regularity in their 
meals, but whenever they felt hungry, one 
would go to the pile of logs near the dam 
and select a piece. This was then dragged 
into the lodge and peeled leisurely. When 



How the Winter Went 103 

it was white and shining, it was taken back 
and thrust into some crevice in the dam, 
or piled by itself. It had served its turn, 
and was now discarded. 

One enemy the beavers had who gave 
them considerable annoyance and some 
anxiety. This was the gluttonous wolver- 
ine, which is a mongrel wolf, meaner than 
any other member of the family. His prey 
is small animals, and his particular delicacy 
is beaver meat. He is also a lover of car- 
rion and dark deeds, and is altogether a 
despicable fellow. 

The crowning event in the life of the 
beaver lodge during that first winter, was 
the coming of four fuzzy, awkward, beaver 
babies. They were very queer looking lit- 
tle chaps, with long, clumsy hind legs, 
which they never knew quite how to use 
until they were shown the mysteries of the 
water world and swimming. These mites 
of beavers were not as well clad as their 



104 Shaggycoat 



parents, for their fur was very short, but 
the}^ nestled close to their mother, and, by 
dint of wriggling into her warm coat, kept 
warm until spring. 

Shaggycoat was much busier after the 
young beavers came. He now had to 
bring all the wood into the lodge, for 
Brighteyes stuck close to her children and 
Shaggycoat was glad to wait upon her. So, 
when she was hungry, he brought logs into 
the mud house and peeled them for her. 

Several times during the winter, they 
heard sounds of some animal digging at the 
outer wall of their castle, and occasionally 
an ugly looking wolfish muzzle was thrust 
in at the vent, which at first gave them 
great uneasiness, but, by degrees, this wore 
away, as they found out how strong the 
house was and how little the digging of 
their enemy accomplished. 

At last the spring rains came, and the ice 



How the Winter Went 105 

began to break up. Then, as the water 
rose, and the ice was tumbled about by the 
current, which was swollen, there were loud 
reports from the cracking ice that echoed 
across the valley, just as they had when the 
great pines fell. 

Huge cakes of ice were piled upon their 
island, and one struck the mud house, 
threatening to demolish it, but it withstood 
the shock. 

The dam was severely tried during these 
spring freshets. The ice pounded and 
ground away at it, and the water set back, 
until the pond was twice the size it had 
been in the autumn. The beavers were 
nearly drowned out of their lodge during 
this high water, but finally a portion of the 
dam gave way and the water fell. Then 
the ice went churning and scraping through 
the break. Driftwood and brush and all 
sorts of debris came down with the flood, 



io6 Shaggycoat 



and the water was full of silt and gravel. 
The pond was not the crystal lake it had 
been. 

It gradually settled, and things looked as 
they had in the autumn ; the trees were 
leafless, and the landscape cheerless. The 
pond also froze over along the edges at 
night and thawed by day. 

Away down in the heart of the earth, the 
secret forces of nature were stirring. The 
maple had already felt the touch of life, 
and its sap coursed gleefully in its veins. 
The awakening had not come yet, but it 
was coming. The flowers and the buds had 
been sleeping, the nuts and the seeds had 
been waiting patiently, but their time of 
waiting was nearly over. 

Already daffodil and arbutus stirred un- 
easily in their slumber. Their dreams were 
light, like the sleep of early morning. 
Into their dreams would steal a sense of 
soft winds and warm sunshine. 



How the Winter Went 107 

Then, one day, the sense of this life about 
them became so certain, and their dreams 
were so real, that they awoke, and spring 
had really come. Up they sprang like 
children who had overslept and opened 
their hearts to the joy of living in the 
warmth of the new spring. 

Now the pond was no longer frozen over 
along the bank, but the shores were very 
muddy with the coming out of the frost. 
Soon birds began to sing in the bushes 
along the pond, and a sense of restlessness 
came over Shaggycoat, for everything 
seemed to be moving. The birds were all 
going somewhere, and why not he ? 

He first cut a good supply of fresh poplar 
logs at the upper end of the pond and 
floated them down near the lodge. This 
took him several days, during which time 
the spring had been advancing, so, when 
this task was finished, the frogs were sing- 
ing in his pond. This was a sure sign of 



io8 Shaggycoat 



spring and one that should not go un- 
heeded. 

The water was pouring through several 
large breaks in his dam, but what cared he ? 
There was still water enough in the pond 
to keep the entrances to the lodge under 
water, but even if it did not, the house 
could be abandoned, and his family could 
live in one of the burrows along the bank 
for a while. 

There were Brighteyes and the four frolic- 
some young beavers to keep him, but the 
rush of distant waters was in his ears, and 
he felt just like swimming miles and miles 
away. Distant waterfalls and rapids were 
calling to him ; deep pools in the river, and 
wonderful mountain lakes were all waiting 
for him. 

So, one day, when the air was soft and 
sweet, and the water was getting warm, he 
slipped away, and Brighteyes knew that 
she should not see him again until early in 



How the Winter Went 109 

September. He was gone to the world of 
water-wonders, far beyond their limited 
horizon. She would stay and take care of 
the babies until his return. 



CHAPTER VII 
LIFE IN THE WATER WORLD 



CHAPTER VII 

LIFE IN THE WATER WORLD 

We have followed the fortunes of Shaggy- 
coat so long that the reader will be interested 
to know just how he looked, as he swam 
away into his water world on this warm 
spring morning. 

He was three years old and his weight 
was already about thirty-five pounds. 
When he was fully grown, he would weigh 
fifty-five or possibly sixty pounds. His 
length was about forty inches, and he would 
add five or six more to it before he got his 
full size. 

His head and body would then be two 
feet and three quarters or three feet of his 
length, and the other foot would be the 
queerest kind of a paddle shaped tail you 
ever saw. It was five inches broad at the 



H4 Shaggy coat 



widest place, and instead of being covered 
with fur, like the rest of the beaver's body, 
it was covered with a tough, scaly skin, 
that gave it quite a fishy look. 

It was believed by the ancients that the 
beaver's tail was fish, and the rest of him 
was flesh, thus it was lawful to eat the 
beaver's tail on fast days, when they could 
not eat meat. 

If Shaggycoat had lifted his head out of 
the water and looked at you as he swam, 
you would have seen that it was rather 
small and flat, and that his ears which 
were small even for the head, nestled down 
in his fur so that they could hardly be 
noticed. If you could have examined him 
near-by, you would have seen that the 
entrance of each ear was guarded by a fur- 
covered water pad, which the beaver can 
close at will and keep the water from his 
ears. This is very important as he lives so 
much of the time in the water. 



Life in the Water World 115 

The fact is noticeable all through nature, 
and particularly in the study of animals, 
that whenever an animal has need for a 
peculiar organ, or a peculiar sense, it has 
been given him. 

Sometimes, it is a specially warm coat to 
shield him from the cold, as in the case of 
the beaver or otter. Again it will be a long 
bill, with which to bore in the mud for 
worms, like that which whistle-wing, the 
woodcock, possesses ; or perhaps it is a stout 
beak, which can bore into the heart of oak 
or maple, as the woodpecker does. Wher- 
ever there is a peculiar need in nature, there 
is always a peculiar organism to supply it. 

Shaggy coat's fore paws were very short and 
were held well up under him as he swam, 
He rarely used them in the water except to 
hold things in, so they were used more like 
hands than feet. But his hind legs were 
long and stout, and they worked away like 
the screw upon a steamboat, as he moved 



n6 Shaggycoat 



easily along through the water. His hind 
feet were also webbed, which gave more 
resistance, while the legs were set high up 
on the body, and the stroke was given at an 
angle, which gave him greater power and 
sweep. He was altogether a wonderful 
animal built specially for swimming. 

His front teeth were shovel-shaped, two 
upon each jaw. They came together like 
wire cutters, and whatever was between 
them was severed. An alder stick an inch 
in diameter was severed at a single bite, and 
small saplings came down in a few seconds. 

You may wonder what Shaggycoat saw 
as he loitered by lake and stream, now 
skirting a noisy waterfall or turbulent rapids 
and now loitering in a deep pool. It was 
a most wonderful world, full of strange 
creatures and fishes, and the shores of the 
rivers were frequented by many creatures. 

Water is the first necessity with which to 
sustain life, and lakes and springs are the 



Life in the Water World 117 

drinking places of the wild creatures, as 
well as the home of many of them. 

With the fishes that swam in the stream, 
Shaggycoat was well acquainted, but he 
rarely molested them and never ate them as 
the otter did, preferring bark or lily bulbs, 
for he was a vegetarian. 

A beautiful sight that he frequently saw 
was a lot of salmon jumping a low fall to the 
pool above. There would be a ripple and a 
splash, a shower of water would be thrown 
up, and the sunlight would break into a myr- 
iad rainbow hues, and the silver gleam of the 
fish would glint for a moment in the light. 
Then there would be a big splash and an- 
other rainbow in the pool above and the sal- 
mon was gone, and the way was clear for 
the next one. 

Sometimes, Osprey, the great fish-hawk of 
the Atlantic seaboard (also called in Florida 
the gray fishing eagle) would come sailing 
majestically by. 



n8 Shaggycoat 



Frequently he uttered his piercing fisher- 
man's cry as he flew. Occasionally, he 
would almost pause in mid-air, giving just 
enough motion to his wings to steady him- 
self, then down he would come like a fall- 
ing star, cleaving the water easily and when 
he appeared a second or two later, a fish was 
usually dangling from his talons. Some- 
times, it was a sucker, or chub, or if he had 
been unusually successful, it might be a 
pickerel or trout. 

When he came up, there was always a 
great shower of water. This when the sun- 
light played upon it made him look like a 
bird of wondrous plumage, but, when he 
had shaken off the water, he was just the 
plain fish-hawk, though magnificent in 
flight. 

Another smaller fisherman was the queer 
blue and white kingfisher who caught his 
fish in his beak instead of his claws. He 
did not make a great plunge like the fish- 



Life in the Water World 119 

hawk when he went fishing, but skimmed 
along close to the water, and plunged under 
suddenly and was up again in a second. 

He was a comparatively small bird, so had 
to content himself with small fish. 

Then there was Blue-coat, the frog 
catcher, who could wade easily in a foot of 
water, his legs being so long and slender. 
He looked more like a bird on stilts than 
one on his natural legs, and his beak, which 
was made especially for frog catching, was 
long and strong. 

He might be seen stepping daintily in 
some shallow near the shore where there 
were plenty of lily pads and water grasses. 
He was very cautious in his movements 
so as not to scare his victim. He would 
stand for five minutes on one leg, if he 
suddenly discovered a frog that he was 
afraid of scaring, then his long neck would 
suddenly shoot out. When he drew up his 
head, a frog would be seen kicking in his 



1 2o Shaggy coat 



bill. He would then hammer the frog on 
a rock, or spear him with his bill, until 
life had left him, when he would hide 
the catch upon the bank and return to his 
sport. 

At dawn and twilight, Shaggycoat fre- 
quently saw flocks of ducks and wild geese 
feeding upon water grasses in sheltered 
coves. Some of them picked away at things 
above the water, but others would dive head 
first and come up bringing a choice bit of 
grass. 

Once a couple of half-grown muskrats 
were playing in a shallow, chasing each 
other about in high glee, when the ugly 
head of a water-snake shot out, and jaws 
that gripped like death closed upon the 
young rat's throat. There was a short 
struggle under water and then a few bub- 
bles floated to the surface and the musquash 
had been done for. A few moments later 
Shaggycoat saw the snake swallowing his 



Life in the Water World 121 

breakfast on an island in the middle of the 
stream. 

These and other experiences taught the 
young beaver to always be on the watch 
and distrust things that seemed strange to 
him. 

The buck drank in the river, and the 
pretty doe, lank and half starved from 
suckling her fawn, ate ravenously of the 
lily pads in the shallow water. 

One evening, just at twilight, thoughts 
of Brighteyes and the baby beavers had so 
haunted Shaggycoat that he had turned 
his nose homeward when a peculiar object 
came round the bend in the stream and on 
toward the pool where the beaver was 
playing. It came like a duck, but it was 
larger than many ducks, and it had two 
wings, like the fish-hawk, which rose and 
fell regularly, with a splash of water each 
time. 

There was a buck drinking in the oppo- 



122 Shaggycoat 



site side of the pool from the beaver, and he, 
too, saw the strange, bright bird that sailed 
like a duck with wings that splashed in 
the water. Then a bright flame leaped up, 
and a roar like thunder resounded across 
the waters, and rolled away into the dis- 
tant foothills. The buck snorted, gave a 
mighty leap, and fell midway in the 
stream, kicking and thrashing, like a 
frenzied thing. 

All this was strange and terrible to the 
beaver, who had never heard such thunder, 
or seen such deadly lightning before, so, 
without waiting to see more, he fled down 
stream and hid under the first shelving 
bank that offered him a hiding-place. 

There he lay very still for several hours, 
but when he ventured out, it was quite 
dark, and the stranger had gone. 

It was man with his deadly " thunder- 
stick/ ' and even the strong buck, with the 
feet of the wind had been as helpless when 




The buck gave a mighty leap and fell midway in 
the stream 



Life in the Water World 123 

it spoke, as his little dappled fawn would 
have been in the same plight. 

Shaggycoat never forgot the scene, or the 
roar of the " thunderstick," and the scent of 
the strange creature seemed to linger in his 
nostrils for days. He had seen enough of 
this strange and terrible water world for 
one summer, and would seek his pond, and 
Brighteyes. 



CHAPTER VIII 
A BIT OF TRAGEDY 



CHAPTER VIII 

A BIT OF TKAGEDY 

Shaggycoat made his way home in a 
leisurely manner, stopping a day here and 
there at some lake or river that pleased his 
fancy. The home sense had not yet fully 
mastered him and he still found pleasure 
in running water, and upon grassy fringed 
banks. 

One morning when he had been upon 
his homeward journey for about a week, he 
turned aside to explore a little stream that 
looked inviting. He intended to return to 
the river and resume his journey in a few 
minutes, but the unexpected happened and 
he did not do as he had intended. He was 
swimming leisurely in a shallow spot, 
where the stream was very narrow, when, 
without any warning, or premonition of 



1 28 Shaggycoat 



danger, he set his foot in a trap. The trap 
had not been baited but merely set at a 
narrow point in the stream, in hope that 
some stray mink or muskrat would blunder 
into it. It was nothing that Shaggycoat 
could blame himself for, but merely one of 
those accidents that befall the most wary 
animals at times. 

The trap was rather light for a beaver, 
but it had caught him just above the first 
joint, and held on like a vise. At first 
Shaggycoat tore about frantically, churning 
up the water and roiling the stream, seek- 
ing by mere strength to free himself, but he 
soon found that this was in vain. He then 
tried drowning the trap, but this was 
equally futile. Next he buried it in the 
mud but it always came up after him when 
he sought to steal away. Then he waited 
for a long time and was quiet, thinking it 
might let him go of its own accord, but the 
trap had no such intention. 



A Bit of Tragedy 129 

As the hours wore on, his paw began to 
swell and pain him, but finally the pain 
gave place to numbness, and his whole fore 
leg began to prickle and feel queer. With 
each hour that passed, a wild terror grew 
upon Shaggycoat, a terror of he knew not 
what. The trap gripped him tighter and 
tighter, and Brighteyes and the young 
beavers seemed so far away that he despaired 
of ever seeing them again. 

Finally the day passed, the sun set, and 
the stars came out. The hours of darkness 
that hold no gloom for a beaver, in which 
he glories as the other creatures do in day, 
were at hand ; but they held no joy for poor 
Shaggycoat. Every few minutes he would 
have a spell of wrenching at the trap, but 
he was becoming exhausted, although he 
had thought his strength inexhaustible. At 
last a desperate thought came to him. It 
seemed the only way out of the difficulty. 

He edged the end of the trap where the 



13° Shaggycoat 



chain was, between two stones, then began 
slowly moving about it in a circle. Occa- 
sionally the trap would come loose, then it 
would be replaced and the twisting process 
renewed. Finally there was a snap, like 
the crack of a dry twig, and the bone had 
been broken. The worst was over. He 
gnawed away and twisted at the broken paw 
until it was severed. 

Did it hurt ? There was no outcry, only 
the splashing of the water, and a bright 
trail of blood floated down-stream, and the 
trap sunk to the bottom to hide the ragged 
bleeding paw that it still held, while a 
wiser and a sadder beaver made his way 
cautiously back to the main stream, licking 
the ragged stump of his fore paw as he went. 

The cold water soon stopped the bleeding 
and helped to reduce the fever, but Shaggy- 
coat was so spent with the night in the trap 
that he stopped to rest for two days before 
resuming his journey homeward. 



A Bit of Tragedy 131 

Just as the sun peeped over the eastern 
hills on the morning that Shaggycoat freed 
himself from the trap, a boy of some twelve 
summers might have been seen hurrying 
across the fields toward the brook, closely 
followed by an old black and tan hound. 
The boy carried a small Stevens Rifle 
known as the hunter's pet, across his arm, 
and both boy and dog were excited and 
eager for the morning's tramp. 

In low places where it was moist, the first 
frost of the season lay heavy upon the grass, 
and its delicate lace work was still plainly 
seen on stones and by the brookside. It 
was a fresh crisp morning, just such a 
morning as makes one's blood tingle, and 
whets the appetite. 

The birds, as well as the boy, had seen 
the frost, and the robins were flocking, 
though most of the summer songsters had 
already gone. 

About half an hour after Shaggycoat left 



132 Shaggycoat 



his ragged paw in the trap and swam away, 
leaving a trail of blood behind him, the 
boy and dog parted the alder bushes, and 
came to the spot where the trap had been 
set. 

" By vum, Trixey, something has been in 
the trap ! " exclaimed the boy, as he noted 
the muddy water and the tracks upon the 
bank, but he could not see whether there 
was still anything in the trap because of 
the silt. He began slowly to haul up the 
chain, Trixey watching the process eagerly. 
At last the end of the chain was reached, 
and the trap dripping water, but containing 
only the ragged paw, came to the surface. 

" Why, Trixey, he's gone 1 " exclaimed 
the boy. " It wasn't no muskrat, either. 
HI bet it was an otter/ ' 

After examining his bloody trophy care- 
fully for a time, the boy reset the trap, and, 
wrapping the paw in some fern leaves, took 
it home to prove his story, but it was 



A Bit of Tragedy 133 

not until several days afterward when he 
showed the paw to an old trapper, that 
he learned that a beaver had been in his 
trap. 

While Shaggycoat is making his way 
painfully back to his mountain lake, oc- 
casionally stopping to favor his freshly am- 
putated paw, let us go back to the lake and 
see how Brighteyes and the young beavers 
have been spending the summer. 

For the first few days after Shaggycoat's 
going, it had seemed very lonely without 
him. He had always been so active, com- 
ing and going, that he was greatly missed. 
But a mother beaver with four lively 
youngsters to provide for, has many things 
to think of, so Brighteyes soon found that 
she was kept quite busy attending to the 
family and providing food, which had been 
done before by her mate. 

One bright May morning when the air 
was sweet with the scent of quickening 



134 Shaggy coat 



buds, the winds soft with the breath of 
spring and a throb of joy was in each heart ; 
when beast and bird and man were all glad 
because the spring had come again, Bright- 
eyes went to the upper end of the pond for 
some saplings for the supply of bark was 
low. She left the young beavers in the 
lodge, where they seemed to be quite safe, 
but the smell of beaver meat had been tick- 
ling the nostrils of the gluttonous wolver- 
ine, and he had lingered about the pond all 
the spring. The beaver lodge had been too 
hard for him to dig through in midwinter, 
when it was frozen like a rock, but the sun 
and winds had drawn the frost from the 
walls, and now it was no harder than any 
other mud house. 

It was so pleasant outside where every- 
thing was singing and springing to the 
light that Brighteyes stayed longer than 
she intended, and when she returned and 



A Bit of Tragedy 135 

dove into the underground passage, leading 
to the lodge, she was surprised to find three 
of the young beavers in the underground 
channel, as close to the water as they could 
get. They were very much frightened and 
did not want to go back into the lodge, so 
she took them to one of the underground 
burrows along the bank, and left them 
there while she reconnoitred. 

Brighteyes found to her great surprise 
that a large hole had been dug in the side 
of the lodge, and, through the opening, she 
could see the brown coat of the wolverine. 
He was eating something, for she could 
hear the crunching of bones. Presently he 
heard Brighteyes in the passage and thrust 
his ugly wolfish head through the hole in 
the wall. His eye was evil, and his chops 
were bloody, and something told the mother 
beaver that the blood was that of her miss- 
ing young one. Then the wolverine sprang 



136 Shaggy coat 



for her through the opening, and she fled 
precipitately and the friendly water of the 
pond enfolded her, where she was safe from 
the glutton. 

Brighteyes returned to the remaining 
youngsters, and after that she guarded them 
with untiring vigilance. They did not re- 
turn to the lodge that summer, but lived in 
the burrows that Shaggycoat had made 
along the bank. When they got tired of 
living in one, they moved to another. In 
this way they were able to shift their base, 
and still keep the friendly waters of the 
pond about them. 

Although the glutton lingered about the 
lake for a week or two, he did not again 
taste beaver meat. So one night he slunk 
away into the woods in search of some rab- 
bit burrow or fox's hole, from which he 
might dig out the luckless victims, and the 
beavers did not see him again. After he 
had been gone for several days, they came 



A Bit of Tragedy 137 

out of hiding and had the freedom of the 
pond. 

When they were large enough, they were 
taught more of the mysteries of swimming 
and diving, at which they would play for 
an hour at a time. In fact they never tired 
of it. 

When they had explored the pond and 
knew all its windings and its many water 
recesses, they went upon the bank, but their 
watchful mother never allowed them to go 
far ashore. They early learned that the 
water world was the only safe place for 
them, and there were dangers to be guarded 
against even there. 

Sometimes, after a swim, they would come 
upon the bank and sit in the sun to make 
their toilet. They would rest upon their 
flat tails, and comb their soft fur with the 
claws upon their hind paws. It was hard 
to reach all places upon the body, but they 
were very patient and combed away per- 



138 Shaggycozt 



sistently. When they had finished, and 
the sun had dried their coats, they were 
very sleek and glossy. 

One starlight night in September, Bright- 
eyes was swimming home from the upper end 
of the pond, when she heard a splash in the 
lake behind her. She quickened her pace, 
but her pursuer came steadily nearer. There 
seemed to be something familiar in the 
sound, so she stopped to investigate. She 
was now certain of it, so with true female 
coquetry, she slipped out upon the bank 
and hid. A moment later Shaggycoat 
found her there, pretending that she did 
not know all the time it was he. 

Her nose was just as warm, and he was 
just as glad to see her, as he had been that 
first night of their tryst. Then the queerest 
love song that ever broke the starry still- 
ness floated out across the pond. It was a 
mere murmur, like the sighing of autumn 
winds in leafless branches. This plaintive 



A Bit of Tragedy 139 

love ditty and the weird concert heard in 
beaver lodges during the summer months 
and the signal whistle given when a beaver 
is lost are the three vocal accomplishments 
of the colony. 



CHAPTER IX 
STRANGERS AT THE LAKE 



CHAPTER IX 

STRANGERS AT THE LAKE 

After his return to the shimmering 
Mountain Lake, Shaggycoat allowed him- 
self a few days leisure in which to enjoy 
the company of Brighteyes and get ac- 
quainted with the frolicsome young beavers. 
They were very shy of him at first, but 
finally came to know that he was the head 
of the lodge. 

One crisp autumn morning when he went 
for a swim he discovered that the frost had 
painted all the trees on the hilltops, and 
seared the grasses and fronds along the 
bank of the lake. Then he knew that this 
idling must cease and hard work upon the 
dam begin. 

The same day just at twilight he went 
far up-stream to see where he could get 



144 Shaggy coat 



material for the dam. It had been badly 
washed by the spring freshet, and his lake 
had shrunk to about half its original size. 
He now planned to rebuild the whole 
structure, using the two old pines as founda- 
tion. 

He had slipped out upon the bank, and 
was busily girdling a poplar, when a strange 
rhythmic splashing in the stream above fell 
upon his ear. His first impression was that 
he had heard something like it before, and 
somehow the sound filled him with a 
strange dread. He scrambled quickly to 
the water and slipped under a friendly 
screen of pickerel weed where he lay watch- 
ing and waiting. He could hear the steady 
splashing plainer now. Then in an instant 
he remembered the terrifying scene of the 
drinking buck and the roaring " thunder- 
stick/' and his own precipitate flight. This 
splashing was like that the great duck had 
made when it came round the bend in the 



Strangers at the Lake 145 

stream. He had hoped to leave that dread 
thing far behind, and here it was coming to 
his own home to seek him out, and perhaps 
destroy them all as it had the buck. 

Then it came in sight and he saw that it 
was larger than many ducks with its two 
wings rising and falling making a bright 
splash in the water at each stroke. 

Shaggycoat waited to see no more but fled 
swiftly and noiselessly toward his dilapi- 
dated lodge, but he occasionally stopped in a 
well screened spot to watch and listen for 
the coming of this monster. 

It was not many minutes before he saw 
it enter the lake, and then he knew that his 
retreat had been discovered by the most 
subtle and destructive of all his foes, man. 

Shaggycoat fled to the lodge and told 
Brighteyes all that he had seen and heard, 
and they counseled together as to what 
course to pursue. 

Brighteyes was for fleeing at once, but 



146 Shaggy coat 



Shaggycoat could not tear himself away 
from this spot that he had selected so care- 
fully and the dam that had cost him so 
much labor, so he counseled waiting another 
day. They could be very wary and never 
show themselves except by night and if 
they kept to the burrows that he had dug 
along the bank, he felt quite sure that the 
stranger could not get at them, so he went 
back to watch these invaders of his strong- 
hold, while Brighteyes hid the young 
beavers in the largest of the burrows near 
the dam. Although the water was low in 
the lake, it was deep here, and she felt 
quite secure. 

The two canoeists never imagined as they 
paddled down the lake, that a wary beaver 
was keeping just so far ahead of them, 
swimming from stump to overhanging bank 
and watching their every movement. 
When they hauled their canoe ashore and 
made a camp-fire, they little suspected that 



Strangers at the Lake 14.7 

they were camping within fifty feet of the 
underground burrow of the beaver. 

While they were cooking supper a flock 
of ducks came sailing over and three of 
their number alighted in the lake to feed 
upon water grass. Then Shaggycoat saw 
one of the strangers pick up the black stick 
that had spoken so loudly to the buck on 
the river bank a few days before. He felt 
a strong impulse to flee but there was a 
strange fascination about it all and he 
wanted to see what happened. 

While he was still wondering which was 
the better course to pursue, the " thunder- 
stick " spoke, and its echo rolled along the 
lake and was thrown from hillside to hill- 
side, again and again. It seemed to Shaggy- 
coat that his quiet lake had suddenly be- 
come the abode of thunder and lightning. 
He waited to see no more but fled to the 
burrow, where he found Brighteyes and the 
young beavers trembling with fright. 



148 Shaggycoat 



The same evening, an hour or two later, 
Shaggycoat heard an ominous whack, 
whack, whack upon his dam. It reminded 
him so forcibly of the pounding that they 
heard in the old Beaver City, before he and 
his grandfather had fled that he was filled 
with dismay. Was his own small dam and 
the lodge that he had reared with so much 
labor to be destroyed just as the old Beaver 
City had been, and he and Brighteyes 
slain ? 

The following day the strangers made 
very free with the beaver's pond, or at least 
Shaggycoat thought so, as he watched them 
covertly from a bunch of alders that grew 
partly in the water. 

What right had they to go paddling 
about in their great red duck just as though 
they owned his lake? 

They stopped at the island and examined 
the dilapidated lodge critically, but they 
took still greater liberties for they finally 



Strangers at the Lake 149 

dug a hole in the side of the house and 
looked inside. 

They were much interested in the beaver's 
dwelling and seemed to be trying to find 
out all about him. 

It angered Shaggycoat extremely to see 
all these liberties taken with his possessions 
but what could he do against the strangers 
with a " thunderstick " that could kill a 
tall buck ; so he discreetly kept out of sight, 
knowing that he could repair the house in 
a few minutes if they would only go away 
and leave the lake to its rightful owners. 

At night the strangers again killed a 
duck with the " thunderstick " and drawing 
their canoe upon the bank made a fire. 

Shaggycoat determined to go nearer to 
them that night and see if he could discover 
what kind of creatures they were. He had 
just left the burrow upon his hazardous ex- 
pedition when he heard a pounding that 
reminded him of the pounding on the ice 



150 Shaggycoat 



when the trappers had come and cut holes 
about their lodges. It could not be that 
they were cutting holes in the ice now, for 
there was no ice, but the steady pounding 
filled him with dread. 

Again Brighteyes counseled that they 
flee at once leaving all to the strangers, but 
Shaggycoat would not go. 

When the pounding ceased and the usual 
quiet reigned, for there was always the 
sighing of the wind, or perhaps the hooting 
of an owl, he crept cautiously forth to see 
what these meddlesome creatures had been 
doing. 

The first thing he discovered alarmed him 
extremely. The water was falling and there 
was a great hole in his dam. Why not flee 
at once ? But where ? Had not he and his 
grandfather fled for days and weeks, and 
the strangers had found him out at last. 
They would discover him again if he fled. 

But the rapidity with which the water 



Strangers at the Lake 151 

was falling alarmed him more than even 
the thought of these dread strangers. If it 
should fall below the mouth of their bur- 
row, their enemies could get them. The 
break in the dam must be repaired at once, 
so he hurried back to the burrow to tell his 
mate and they set to work. 

First they sought to stem the flow of 
water temporarily, until they could do it 
thoroughly, so they swam up the lake fifteen 
or twenty rods and going ashore gathered 
each an armful of weeds and cat-tails. 
These they carried to the dam, holding 
them in their arms and swimming in a 
more upright position than usual. 

They threw the weeds into the break, 
but the swift current swept them away in a 
very few seconds. This would not do ; 
they must try something more substantial, 
so Shaggycoat went ashore and cut strong 
stakes and stuck them in the mud at either 
end of the break. Then they cut a dozen 



15 2 Shaggy coat 



alder bushes and laid them across, allowing 
the stakes to hold them at either end. The 
current could not sweep this aw r ay, but the 
water still flowed freely through the bushes 
and something finer was now needed. 

They again swam up the lake and re- 
turned with their arms full of weeds. 
These they wove in and out among the 
alder bushes, but the work was not com- 
plete until they had brought mud and 
plastered it solid. When this had been 
done, the flow of water was effectually 
stopped. 

Then Shaggycoat sat upon his broad tail 
and viewed their work critically. He had 
become so absorbed in repairing the dam 
that he had for the moment forgotten the 
strangers who had caused him this trouble. 

He was wondering whether they had bet- 
ter bring more mud when a strong puff of 
wind filled his nostrils with a strange re- 
pugnant scent. It sent a shiver of dread 



Strangers at the Lake 153 

through him, and caused the long hairs to 
rise upon his neck. Where had he smelled 
that before? Somewhere he had caught 
such a scent, and the remembrance of it 
was not pleasant. 

Then it came back to him. It was at the 
old Beaver City when the trappers were 
chopping holes in the ice and destroying its 
inhabitants. The trap also into which he 
had stepped the summer before had been 
strong with the same odor. Then the 
beaver's eyes grew big with wonder and 
fright, for there in the tree above him, not 
fifty feet away, he saw one of the dreaded 
strangers watching him. With a resound- 
ing slap his tail smote the water and a 
second later, only a ripple showed where 
the beaver had disappeared. 

The following morning the meddlesome 
strangers loaded their belongings into the 
great duck, carried it around the end of the 
dam and paddled away down stream. 



154 Shaggycozt 



It was with great joy that Shaggy coat 
observed from his place of hiding, these 
movements on their part. But he thought 
they might be trying to fool him, so he fol- 
lowed at a distance. 

When he had seen them round a bend in 
the stream nearly a mile from the dam, he 
concluded that their leaving was no sham, 
and went back to his lake, well pleased 
with the turn of affairs. 

He and Brighteyes and another pair of 
beavers, who had returned with him from 
his summer ramble, began work on the dam 
and by the time the first freeze came, it was 
strong and symmetrical and higher, and 
longer than it had been before. This made 
the water set back and several families 
of musquash, who had built along the 
shore of the lake, were drowned out, and 
obliged to gather new supplies of winter 
edibles. 

This angered the muskrat families who 



Strangers at the Lake 155 

revenged themselves on the beavers in a 
way they did not like. 

In the morning, when the builders left off 
working on the dam, it would be in good 
shape, but by twilight it would be leaking 
badly. 

Examination showed many holes tun- 
neled through the mud, which made the 
dam leak. For several days Shaggycoat 
could not discover who was molesting his 
dam, but he finally set a watchman, and 
the destroyers were caught in the act. 
After that whenever a muskrat was seen 
anywhere near the dam, he was rudely hur- 
ried to another part of the lake. When the 
dam had been repaired, the lodge was at- 
tended to, but this winter there were two 
lodges on the island instead of one. 

The forest was now entirely denuded and 
the naked arms of maple and poplar swayed 
fitfully in the rude gusts of the boisterous 
early winter wind. In its mad careering 



156 Shaggycoat 



down the aisles of the pathetic forest, it 
caught up the dead leaves and whirled them 
about gleefully. 

Summer had had its day, and November 
must now have its inning. 

Down from the distant foothills which 
were now sere and brown, came a shuffling, 
shambling black figure, closely followed by 
two little shuffling, shambling figures. It 
was evident that more strangers were com- 
ing to the beavers' lake. 

They sniffed at the bushes, and poked 
under the dead leaves inquisitively as they 
came. Whenever they discovered nuts, 
they ate them greedily. These figures were 
not agile, like most of the denizens of the 
woods, but rather clumsy. Whenever they 
planted their large paws (which were armed 
with massive claws) upon a twig, it crunched 
under the weight with a muffled sound. 

It did not snap as it would have done 
under the hoof of a deer or crack as 



Strangers at the Lake 157 

under the hoof of a moose, but it simply 
crunched. 

The figures did not go stealthily like the 
cat family or furtively like a fox, but there 
was a certain cunning in their manner, 
which was more shrewd than suspicious. 

Whenever they crowded through heavy 
underbrush, they occasionally left long black 
hairs, which hunters would at once identify, 
as coming from the warm winter coat of 
Bruin. 

An old mother bear and two cubs were 
making their way down to the beavers' lake, 
which they had seen from the foothills. 

The old bear was leading the way as was 
her wont, and the cubs were following like 
dutiful children. 

There were no sheepfolds in this wilder- 
ness so far from the haunts of man, and, as 
for pig, the old bear had not tasted it since 
early in the spring. Some instinct or in- 
tuition told her that the beautiful forest 



158 Shaggycoat 



lake was the work of a beaver, and if their 
houses had not been frozen up too hard, 
they might be broken into and made to pay 
toll to the family of Bruin. 

So the errand of these strangers boded no 
good for Shaggycoat and his household. 

The old bear and the two cubs came out 
upon the lake just at the dam, and as there 
was a fresh wind blowing from up-stream, 
beaver scent was strong. 

Then the countenance of the old bear, 
which was usually droll and good natured, 
became cunning and eager with the thought 
of beaver meat. 

The conical beaver houses were out on an 
island some distance from the shore so the 
old bear tried the ice and found that it held. 
Then she went slipping and sliding over the 
smooth surface to the island, closely followed 
by the cubs. 

She walked about the larger of the two 
lodges several times before deciding what to 



Strangers at the Lake 159 

do, then reared upon her hind legs and 
peeped in at the vent. There, almost within 
reach of her paw, were four or five sleek 
beavers. 

The sight of meat so near at hand caused 
the old bear to forget her cunning and she 
thrust one of her powerful forearms in at 
the vent reaching wildly for the beavers. 
Then what a scrambling there was for both 
the front and back door of the lodge, as the 
astonished and terrified beavers made their 
escape. 

Seeing that this tactic was useless, Bruin 
withdrew her paw, and again peeped in, but 
the beaver house was quite empty. 

Even with her strong arms, she could not 
tear off the top of the lodge which was frozen 
hard as stone. 

After spending two days in futile efforts 
to get at the beavers, the three bears sham- 
bled off through the wood in search of 
winter quarters. 



i6o Shaggycoat 



They were not long in finding a fallen 
tree with a heavy top which made a good 
covering, so they crawled in and went to 
sleep. Soon the heavy snow-storms covered 
them up snug and warm, and the only evi- 
dence that the tree-top was the home of three 
bears, was a small hole melted in the snow 
where the breath of the three sleepers thawed 
it. This was their chimney through which 
their warm breath would ascend until 
spring. 

When the strong forearm of the old bear, 
with its powerful claws, had raked the 
beavers' lodge in search of supper, Shaggy- 
coat and his family had not fully understood 
the intruder's motive, although they knew 
quite well that it was sinister. 

The following summer, however, during 
his annual ramble, Shaggycoat learned all 
about the bears' fondness for the beaver, 
and this bit of knowledge increased his fear 
of the bear family. 



Strangers at the Lake 161 

He had frequently seen Bruin watching 
the fish in some deep pool and trying when- 
ever they came to the surface to sweep one 
out on the land with his paw, but one day 
he discovered a bear watching something 
else in the water. 

Shaggycoat could not see anything to 
watch, but he did notice an occasional 
bubble coming to the surface. This was 
what interested the bear. 

Presently Bruin dove head first into the 
water and after remaining down for several 
seconds came blowing and puffing to the 
surface, bringing a half drowned beaver in 
his jaws. If anything more was needed to 
add to the unfortunate beaver's trouble, it 
was that one of his forepaws was firmly held 
in a trap. The bear had evidently discovered 
the beaver in a trap, and had driven him to 
the bottom. He laid his unfortunate victim 
down and with one blow of his strong paw 
broke the beaver's neck. 



162 Shaggycoat 



This was enough for Shaggycoat and he 
fled like a hunted thing, and after that day 
he always kept as much water between him- 
self and the bear family as possible. 



CHAPTER X 
A TROUBLESOME FELLOW 



CHAPTER X 

A TROUBLESOME FELLOW 

The first time that Shaggycoat saw the 
brown fisherman, he came sliding over the 
surface of the beavers' pond, and the man- 
ner of his coming both astonished and 
angered Shaggycoat. 

The thing that astonished him was to see 
the otter slide, and he was angry, because 
the stranger acted just as though the pond 
belonged to him and Shaggycoat knew that 
it was his own. Had he not spent days 
and weeks searching in the wilderness for a 
spot where he could make his home and had 
not he and Brighteyes built the dam that 
flowed the meadow ? It was all his and the 
manner of this merry stranger made him 
furious. 



166 Shaggy coat 



He would show him who was master 
here, so the beaver began swimming rapidly 
about under the ice, trying vainly to find 
an escape to the outer air. But Jack Frost 
had shut down a transparent ice window 
over the pond the night before, and, although 
Shaggycoat could still see the sky and the 
trees along the shore, yet the outer world 
would not be his again until spring. He 
could find an airhole by going up-stream 
two or three miles to some rapids, but the 
return trip overland was not inviting, for 
he, like other beavers, was a poor pedestrian 
and would not go any long distance except 
by water. So true is this of the beaver, that 
one naturalist says he may be kept a priso- 
ner in a certain portion of a stream, simply 
by placing wire netting across the current 
and running it inland for a hundred feet in 
either direction. A beaver so held between 
two wire fences at right angles to the stream, 
will spend several days in captivity before 



A Troublesome Fellow 167 

he will venture around the end of the fence 
to freedom. 

It was out of the question for Shaggycoat 
to go two miles up-stream and think of re- 
turning overland merely to fight, so he 
gave up the plan and amused himself by 
watching the otter. 

He had never seen any one so agile before 
and he would have been amused at the 
otter's pranks, had it not been upon his own 
particular pond. 

The otter would go up the bank where it 
was steep and give three or four great jumps. 
When he struck the surface ice, he would 
double his fore legs up so that they lay 
along his sides, and slide across the ice on 
his breast, trailing his hind legs. 

Then he would scamble up the opposite 
bank and repeat the performance, carrying 
him nearly back to the other side. Shaggy- 
coat thought he had never seen anything 
quite so interesting in his life and he 



168 Shaggycoat 



swam about under the ice watching his 
visitor. 

Finally in one of his slides the otter passed 
over the spot where Shaggycoat was and saw 
him for the first time. 

He could not stop in his slide in time to 
pay his compliments to the beaver, but 
he soon came slipping and sliding back and 
glared down at the owner of the pond show- 
ing a set of teeth, almost as good as the 
beaver's own. 

Shaggycoat glared back at him and they 
both knew the fight would come some other 
day. 

The otter seemed to say by his looks, 
" Come up here and I will shake you out of 
that drab coat," and the beaver's counte- 
nance replied, " You just come down here 
and I'll drown you and then tear you to 
pieces just to see what your brown coat is 
made of." 

Shaggycoat saw a great deal of the otter 



A Troublesome Fellow 169 

on these crisp, clear days, before the ice be- 
came clouded, and his coming and going al- 
ways made the beaver uneasy. 

Sometimes this playful coaster would slide 
the entire length of the pond, going half a 
mile in two or three minutes. He would 
stick his sharp claws into the ice and give two 
or three bounds, then he would slide a long 
distance. 

The momentum that he got from the 
springs would usually carry him seventy- 
five or a hundred yards. 

Shaggycoat thought it must be great sport, 
but the coaster should play upon his own 
pond, if he had one, and leave other people's 
undisturbed. 

Finally a great fall of snow spread a soft, 
white, impenetrable blanket over the ice, 
and the beaver saw no more of his enemy 
until spring. 

At last with their golden key the sun- 
beams unlocked the ice door over the lake 



1 70 Shaggycoat 



and the denizens of beaver city were again 
free to go and come in the outer world. 
Then Shaggycoat swam a mile or so up- 
stream to look for elderberry wood. There 
was something in the pungent acid sap of 
the elderberry that he craved after the in- 
active life of winter. This was his spring 
medicine, a tonic that the beaver always 
seeks if he can find it, when the first great 
thaw opens the ice in the river. 

He also was fond of the sweet maple sap 
and stopped to girdle a small soft maple on 
the way. He would remember that maple 
and come again. The sap would run freely 
during the day and freeze at night and in 
the morning the ice would be covered with 
syrup, white, transparent, and sweet as 
honey. This was a primitive sugar-making 
in which the beaver indulged. 

He had satisfied his spring craving for 
both sweet and sour with maple and elder 
sap and was swimming leisurely down- 



A Troublesome Fellow 171 

stream toward his lake when he heard a 
sound on shore. Something was coming 
through the woods, for he heard the snow 
crackling, Shaggycoat kept very still and 
watched and listened. Nearer and nearer 
the sounds came and presently he saw the 
otter coming with long jumps, breaking the 
crust at every spring. They discovered 
each other almost at the same instant and 
the otter was all fight in a second. The fur 
stood up on his neck, his eyes snapped, and 
his lips parted showing a white, gleaming 
set of teeth. 

He made straight for the beaver, cover- 
ing the snow with great jumps and Shaggy- 
coat saw that his best course was to meet 
his enemy in the water. On land he would 
be no match for so agile a foe. So he swam 
in mid-stream and clambered upon a low 
rock and waited for the attack. This was 
the hour for which he had longed all through 
the winter months, but now that it was at 



172 Shaggycozt 



hand, he almost wished that he was back in 
his snug house on the lake. The otter was 
a third larger than he, and he swam so 
easily and his every motion was so quick 
and strong that the beaver feared him even 
before he had found how good a fighter he 
was. 

He began by swimming about the rock 
several times, snapping at his adversary at 
every chance. This necessitated Shaggy- 
coat's turning very fast and as he was not as 
quick as his foe, he got his tail nipped twice 
almost before he knew it. Then he con- 
cluded the rock was no place for him so 
made a clumsy spring for the otter's back. 
But when he fell in the water with a great 
splash, the otter was not where he had been 
a second before, but was glaring at the 
beaver from the rock which he had reached 
in some unaccountable manner. 

While Shaggycoat was still wondering 
what to do next, the otter took matters 



A Troublesome Fellow 173 

into his own hands, by jumping squarely 
upon the beaver's back, and setting his 
teeth into his neck. It would have been 
a sorry day for poor Shaggycoat had not 
a projecting rock been near by, under 
which he plunged, scraping off his enemy, 
and thus saving his neck from being badly 
chewed, if not broken. He was getting 
decidedly the worst of it, so when the 
otter went back to the rock, Shaggycoat 
swam out from his hiding-place, and 
started for the lake at his best speed with 
his foe in hot pursuit. 

What a swim that was and how they 
churned up the water in that running 
fight back to the lake. The beaver with 
his strong hind legs working desperately, 
doubling, twisting, and turning, snapping 
at his enemy whenever that agile fellow 
gave him a chance, and the otter gliding 
with swift, strong strokes, swimming 
over and under the beaver and punish- 



174 Shaggycoat 



ing him at every turn. Foam and blood 
flecked the water and a line of bubbles 
marked their progress. 

It seemed to Shaggycoat that his strong- 
hold toward which he was retreating, fight- 
ing off his heavy foe so valiantly, was miles 
away, but at last, to his great joy, it was 
reached, and there, at the upper end of the 
lake was Brighteyes, licking at the maple 
stump that he had girdled that morning. 
Like a faithful helpmate she flew to his 
relief, and the otter, seeing that he had two 
beavers to fight instead of one, gave up the 
chase and swam away. 

It is doubtful if he would have fought 
a female beaver, for there is a certain chiv- 
alry shown the sex, even in the woods. 

The next otter that Shaggycoat saw was 
much smaller than his enemy and he at 
once concluded that it was a female, which 
proved to be the case. She was lying upon 
a rock in mid-stream, watching the water 



A Troublesome Fellow 175 

closely. Her intense manner at once at- 
tracted the beaver's attention, so he kept 
quiet and watched just to find out what she 
was doing. 

Presently she sprang from the rock like 
a flash and swam down-stream with a 
rapidity that fairly took Shaggycoat's 
breath away, good swimmer that he was. 
But he was still more astonished, when a 
second later she struck out for the shore 
bearing a large fish in her jaws. The fish 
was giving a few last feeble flops with its 
tail. 

What she wanted with the nasty fish, 
Shaggycoat could not imagine, so he kept 
still and watched. She lay down upon the 
sand, and holding the fish down with one 
paw, began tearing it to pieces and eating 
it. She had not been long at work when 
Shaggycoat noticed two otter pups, that 
had previously escaped his attention, play- 
ing in the sand near the old otter. They 



176 Shaggycoat 



were as playful as kittens and were rolling 
and tumbling about having a merry 
time. When the old otter had finished her 
fish, she called the youngsters to her, and 
lying down upon the sand, gave them their 
own supper, which was neither flesh nor fish. 

When they were satisfied, she tried to 
coax them into the water. She would 
plunge in herself, and then face about and 
stand pleading with them, but they were 
afraid and would not venture in. Finally, 
one a little bolder than the other, came to 
the water's edge, and dipped his paw in it, 
but evidently did not like it, for he went 
back on the bank. Then the old otter 
resorted to a strange stratagem, and got her 
way as mothers will. ■ 

She lay down upon the sand and 
romped and rolled with her pups, tumbling 
them over and over. Finally at the 
height of the play, they were coaxed upon 
her back, when she slipped quickly into 



A Troublesome Fellow 177 

the stream, where she tumbled them off, 
and left them kicking and sputtering. A 
moment later they scrambled out looking 
like drowned rats. But the lesson that 
she had sought to teach them had been 
learned. They had discovered that the 
water did them no harm and before the 
shades of night had fallen and the stars 
appeared, they were playing in the stream 
of their own accord. 

All this amused Shaggycoat so much 
that he forgot to be angry with the old 
otter, and finally went away to look for 
his own supper of poplar bark. 

Later in the summer, he did really 
meet his enemy face to face, but under 
such strange conditions that the beaver 
never forgot the incident. 

He was swimming rapidly down-stream 
on the return trip to Brighteyes and his 
own forest lake. There were other lakes 
in the wilderness that he visited each sum- 



178 Shaggycoat 



mer during his long rambles but none quite 
like his, so he was hastening in the autumn 
twilight, for he knew that in two or three 
days he would again be at home. 

Suddenly, as he rounded a sharp bend in 
the stream, he came upon his enemy close 
at hand. The otter seemed to be engaged in 
wrestling with something in the water. He 
was near shore and making quite a splash. 

All of the old fury came back to Shaggy- 
coat. This was the fellow who had so pun- 
ished him on that memorable day, but 
Shaggycoat was now larger and stronger 
than he had been the year before. He 
felt that he was a match for the otter. He 
would punish him now so that he would 
never dare to slide upon his pond again. 

Shaggycoat started forward noiselessly to 
take his enemy by surprise and had gotten 
within twenty yards before the otter saw 
him and then that bold fellow seemed 
greatly frightened. He plunged about fran- 



A Troublesome Fellow 179 

tically and churned up the water, roiling 
the stream. Then it was that Shaggycoat 
noticed something strange which sent the 
fur up on his neck and all along his back 
and recalled sensations that were anything 
but pleasant. When the otter reared and 
plunged, the beaver saw that his forepaw 
was firmly held in the cruel thing that 
had caught him the year before. 

Now was his time. The trap would hold 
the otter tight and he would punish him. 
Again the otter reared and plunged, and a 
new possibility came to Shaggycoat. Per- 
haps there were more traps all about them. 
Maybe there was one right under his paws 
this very minute. His fury at his enemy 
gave way to fear for his own safety and he 
fled precipitately not even waiting to see if 
his enemy got free. As he fled, the terror 
of traps grew upon him, so that for miles he 
did not dare to touch his paws on the bot- 
tom of the stream. 



180 Shaggycoat 



At last, weary and exhausted, he crawled 
under an overhanging bank and slept, and 
in sleep forgot the fear that had pursued 
him all through the night. But his enemy 
never troubled him again, either upon the 
streams that he frequented in summer, or 
on his own forest lake in winter. 



CHAPTER XI 
A BANK BEAVER 



CHAPTER XI 

A BANK BEAVER 

When Shaggycoat returned from his sec- 
ond summer's ramble, he brought home 
with him a large good natured beaver whom 
we will call Brownie. 

This newcomer to the valley was a third 
larger than Shaggycoat, and lighter colored. 
The long hairs in his glossy coat were light 
brown, while his under fur was a drab. His 
tail was also larger and longer than that of 
his host. 

Brownie turned out to be what is called a 
bank beaver. In France all the beavers are 
bank beavers ; in America they were all 
house beavers originally, but they have 
been so crowded and hunted from their 
native haunts by trappers and frontiersmen, 
that many of them have become bank 



184 Shaggy coat 



beavers ; probably because this mode of life 
is less conspicuous, and leaves them better 
protected from the attacks of man, but they 
are a more easy prey to their natural en- 
emies, and to starvation in the winter. 

Naturalists have quarreled and disputed 
as scientists will, as to whether the bank 
beaver in America is a separate specie, or 
merely the house beaver, who has adopted 
the methods and manners of the bank 
beaver. 

I am inclined to the latter view, as birds, 
animals, and even plants will modify their 
mode of life to suit changing conditions. 

At first Shaggycoat liked Brownie very 
much. He was so good natured and play- 
ful that he made a pleasant companion, on 
the return trip home, but, when work upon 
the dam began, and he was invited to put 
his strong muscles in play, he demurred. 
There was no need of building a dam he 
thought. Why not be content with a hole 



A Bank Beaver 185 

in the bank, and then there would be no 
need of cutting these great trees, and tug- 
ging and hauling on logs and stones. Small 
trees furnished just as good bark as large 
ones, and were much easier to cut. But 
Shaggycoat did not like this lazy manner 
of living, besides he did not think it safe. 
When day after day Brownie refused to help 
on the dam, he flew into a rage with so lazy 
a fellow, and gave Brownie such a severe 
trouncing that he never dared show himself 
about the lake afterward, so he went a mile 
or so down stream, and set up housekeeping 
for himself. But there was not much house 
about it, for his home was merely a deserted 
otter's den, although he considered it quite 
adequate. 

One naturalist asserts that the bank 
beaver in America is a forlorn, sorrowful 
fellow, who has been disappointed in love, 
and has to go through life without a mate ; 
while another avers that he is a drone who 



i86 Shaggy coat 



will not labor, and so is driven from the 
colony. 

Brownie certainly was a drone, and per- 
haps he had left his little mud love token 
along the watercourse that autumn, and it 
had remained unopened, but certainly his 
was a lonely life. 

He took up his abode about a mile below 
the dam, and although they sometimes saw 
him watching them from a distance, he 
never dared again trespass on the premises 
of these more ambitious beavers. 

His burrow was located where the river 
was deep so that he might be well protected 
from the waterside. He could not lay up a 
large supply of wood for food as the house 
beaver did, but he managed to secure con- 
siderable under roots and stones along the 
shore. Some of this the current carried 
down stream, and his stock ran short before 
spring. 

Perhaps he thought of his snugly housed 




m%£* t^EWM>- 



There is where the hunter and the hunted met 



A Bank Beaver 187 

cousins on cold winter days and nights, as 
he nestled alone in his comfortless burrow. 
In the beaver houses, the warmth of several 
bodies, and the breath from many nostrils, 
kept the temperature quite comfortable, but 
lonely Brownie had to be his own bedfellow, 
and what warmth there was came from his 
own body, and warming one's self with 
one's own heat is rather a forlorn task. 

Also when his supply of bark ran low, 
and he had to gnaw upon tree roots to keep 
the breath of life in his body, he remem- 
bered the house beaver's generous supply of 
wood. 

If the winter was not too severe, the 
stream might be open for a while at the 
rapids near by, when he could replenish his 
store, but, floundering about in the deep 
snow in midwinter, leaving telltale tracks 
at every step, and an unmistakable beaver 
scent, was hazardous business. There were 
many creatures in the wilderness who were 



188 Shaggycoat 



fiercer and stronger than the harmless 
beaver, and they all loved beaver meat. 

As we have already seen, the bear would 
prowl about in beaver land, just before den- 
ning up, for a last smack of blood. The 
wildcat and the lynx were about as fond of 
beaver as of fish and they could watch for 
both at the same time, which made it doubly 
interesting. The sneaking wolverine also 
considered the beaver his particular titbit. 

For all of these reasons Brownie would 
go hungry for several meals before he would 
venture outside to replenish his store of 
bark. 

One evening late in November, he was 
leaving his burrow to go ashore and do some 
wood cutting when just at the entrance a 
premonition of danger came upon him. 
That peculiar sense of danger that many 
animals have told him that something was 
wrong. I have known several cases where 
dogs had premonitions of coming disaster in 



A Bank Beaver 189 

the family, and it was probably this instinc- 
tive power that told Brownie that something 
was waiting for him at the mouth of his 
burrow, so he just poked the tip of his nose 
out, to see what it was that made him so 
uncomfortable. 

Quick as a flash a mighty paw armed with 
a raking set of claws, struck him a stunning 
blow in the nose. He had just sense enough 
left to wriggle back a few feet into the 
burrow, and keep quiet. 

Although his nose was bleeding profusely 
and he had been severely stunned, in a few 
seconds he recovered, for without doctors, or 
medicine, the wild creatures have a way of 
recovering rapidly from any hurt. 

From the strong bear scent that penetrated 
his burrow, Brownie knew that his enemy 
was a bear, even before Bruin reached his 
strong arm in and tried to poke him out. 
But he had no mind to be poked, so he 
wriggled out of reach and was glad that he 



190 Shaggycozt 



had escaped so easily. The bear hung about 
the spot for a day or two, often watching 
catlike at the hole. Sometimes he would go 
back into the woods, hoping to entrap the 
beaver into coming out, but Brownie had no 
desire to become further acquainted with the 
ugly fellow and so stayed in, although this 
two days' imprisonment hindered his wood 
cutting. 

The next watcher at his front door was 
the mean, sneaking wolverine, who kept him 
a prisoner for two or three days more. This 
enemy was even more to be dreaded than 
the bear, for he would have dug the beaver 
out if the mouth of his burrow had not been 
so far under water. He did start to dig him 
out from the bank above, running a shaft 
down to strike the beaver den. He would 
have found the burrow without a doubt, but 
a hard freeze put a stop to his digging so he 
left the bank beaver and went up to the dam 
to try his luck with the house beavers. 



A Bank Beaver 191 

All these things made Brownie's supply 
of wood much smaller than it should have 
been. But the trouble was not there. He 
should have been more provident, and 
worked earlier in the autumn when he had 
a chance. 

Finally the ice door was shut down over 
lake and stream, and there was no more go- 
ing out for the beaver family. 

Now Brownie was unwise again, for he 
did not guard his store carefully, but ate 
greedily without a thought of how long the 
winter before him might be. 

By the time the great January thaw came 
he had entirely exhausted his supply of bark 
and had gnawed all the tree roots that he 
could reach under the ice. 

He would have famished in a few days 
more had not the great thaw opened an air- 
hole in the ice, through which he escaped 
into the adjacent woods. He knew that 
this was hazardous, but hunger impelled 



192 Shaggycoat 



him and hunger is a mighty argument. 
For about a week all went well and he was 
congratulating himself upon his good 
fortune, and had about concluded that he 
had been too cautious, when the unexpected 
happened. This night he went forth as 
usual to cut sapling for his supper but did 
not return. 

Just what happened I shall not tell, but 
we will follow his tracks in the snow and 
see if we can guess. 

For three or four rods we can see where 
he floundered along to a clump of bushes, 
and here there are four ragged stumps and 
near by three small poplars lying in the snow. 
Then here are the marks of brush being 
dragged along on the snow to the burrow. 
Then there is a second beaver track leading 
back to the fallen poplars, and here is 
another track coming from down-stream and 
following beside the beaver track. This 
track shows four large paw prints in a bunch 



A Bank Beaver 193 

and the creature did not trot but hopped 
like a rabbit. 

Now he has stopped, for the paw prints 
are spread out as though he stood watching 
and listening. See where the fur on his 
belly brushed the snow as he crept forward. 
Now he is crouching low, the belly mark on 
the snow is plainer. What a break in the 
track is this. Three great jumps, each 
measuring ten feet, and here are other 
tracks of the same kind coming from two 
directions. 

See how the snow is tramped and blurred. 
Ah, there is where the hunter and hunted 
met, and the pale winter moon and the 
gleaming stars know what happened. 

There are still a few small drops of blood, 
and eager tongues have licked up many 
more, for the snow is blotted and streaked 
with these tongue marks. Here and there 
are brown hairs that tell their pathetic 
story to the woodsman who can see it all in 



194 Shaggy coat 



the tracks as well as though it had hap- 
pened before his own eyes. 

The unfortunate wood-cutter had fallen a 
victim to one of those ferocious lynx bands, 
that range the woods in extreme winters 
when hunger drives them to hunt in com- 
pany. It had been cleverly done as things 
are, in the woods. One of the company had 
come up the stream and cut off the beaver's 
chance of escape to his burrow. He had 
then followed on the fresh track to the pop- 
lars where the band had closed in on their 
unfortunate prey. 

Only the uncanny night knows how piti- 
ful was the cry from the terrified and agon- 
ized beaver as these three furies hurled them- 
selves upon him and in fewer seconds than 
it takes to tell it, tore him to shreds. 



CHAPTER XII 
THE BUILDERS 



CHAPTER XII 

THE BUILDERS 

When the tardy spring at last came to 
Beaver City, it was with a rush. 

On the first day of March the snow 
was three feet deep in the woods along 
the foothills, and two feet upon the smooth 
surface of the beavers' lake. By the tenth 
of the month, one might search long to 
find even a small snow-bank along the 
north side of the woods, or behind some 
protecting boulder. 

The wind, the rain, and the sun had all 
combined to bring about this marvelous 
change. 

For three days " it had rained suds," as 
the country people say, and then a merry 
south wind had blown across the fog-covered 
snow-banks. 



198 Shaggy coat 



All the little streams hastening down the 
mountainside became raging torrents, and 
the larger stream emptying into Beaver 
Lake, fairly went mad. 

In a single night it rose several feet, 
breaking up the ice, and tossing it about as 
a child might his toys. 

In some places the great gleaming cakes 
were shouldered out upon the shore, and 
piled up in massive blockhouses. In other 
places they jammed, making a very good 
ice dam across the stream. Then the water 
would set back until it felt strong enough 
to cope with the ice, when it would sweep 
the dam away and go thundering down- 
stream tossing the ice about and sweeping 
all before it. 

It was such a jam as this that dammed the 
water just above Beaver Lake, holding it un- 
til the stream foamed and raged like an in- 
furiated monster. Then with a roar like 
thunder it burst through. Thousands of 



The Builders 199 



tons of ice accumulated and piled up 
mountains high. The ice in the lake was 
broken up like glass, and the mighty weight 
of all these contending forces, pressed con- 
tinually upon the beaver's strong dam. 

For a while the sturdy old pines which 
were the backbone of the structure held, 
but finally, creaking, groaning and snapping, 
they were wrenched from their places, and 
with a great rush the beaver dam went 
out. Then hundreds of grating, grinding, 
thundering cakes of ice followed after the 
rushing waters. 

When the ice jam struck the upper end 
of the island where the lodges were, Shag- 
gycoat knew that it was no place for him 
and his family, so led a precipitate flight for 
terra firma. They were fortunate enough 
to find an open place between the cakes of 
ice at the lower end of the island, and all 
escaped into the alder bushes along the 
shore. 



200 Shaggycoat 



But they did not feel safe out in the open, 
with no house to flee to, so as soon as the 
ice went out and the water fell, they went 
back to the burrows. 

When the spring freshet had passed, even 
the entrances to these strongholds were left 
high and dry, and the broad area that had 
been their lake looked very much as it had 
the first time Shaggycoat saw it. 

It would never do to leave the female 
beavers and the youngsters in this unpro- 
tected way while the males were off 
for their summer ramble, so they constructed 
a brush and stone dam that should flow a 
small area, and make the lodges again ten- 
able. This was done by weighting down 
the brush with heavy stones, letting the 
butts of the bushes point down-stream. This 
structure was finally covered with sods and 
mud, making a good temporary dam. 

When Shaggycoat returned from his third 
summer of rambling in distant lakes and 



The Builders 201 



streams he brought back three sturdy pairs 
of beaver, whom he had invited to share his 
pleasant valley. 

There was a definite plan in the wise 
head of our beaver, for the furtherance of 
which he needed more help than his small 
colony now afforded. 

When the water had stood six feet deep 
in the bed of the stream, where the old 
pines had been, it had flowed the lowlands 
from foothill to foothill, and had stretched 
away up-stream until it was lost in the 
distance. The picture of this silvern lake, 
sparkling and shimmering in the bright 
spring sunlight, had captivated Shaggy coat, 
who had seen it all from a knoll on shore. 
The old dam and the old lake, covering 
about half this territory, would never do 
for him again. There must be a dam 
built that would flow all this country, and 
he would be the builder. 

When the water had fallen, he had gone 



202 Shaggycoat 



over the meadows, noting by the watermark 
upon trees and bushes just how his lake 
would extend, and how deep the water 
would be in certain places. The flood had 
surveyed the meadows for him, and all he 
had to do was to look about. 

He had noticed when the water stood six 
feet deep in the channel, that the width of 
the stream where the dam would be placed 
was about one hundred and fifty feet, so 
this would be the length of his dam. 

Although it was still early in the fall, no 
time was lost. The task before them was 
seemingly almost impossible for such small 
creatures. 

Ten eager wood-cutters were sent up- 
stream about a mile to a poplar grove, 
where they began felling trees of from six 
to twelve inches in diameter. These were 
cut into logs about three feet in length, and 
tumbled into the stream. When it became 
choked or the sticks lodged along the shore, 



The Builders 203 



two or three beavers were detailed to act as 
river-men, so they pushed and pulled, 
swimming about among the logs until the 
channel was free again. Several two-year- 
olds worked industriously, gathering flood 
wood that had lodged upon the meadows, 
after the spring freshet. This was also 
pushed into the water and started down- 
stream. 

On the site of the new dam, Shaggycoat 
and Brighteyes, with one other old beaver, 
were working away with might and main, 
straightening out the remains of the old 
dam, and getting the foundations of the 
new structure ready. 

Soon the poplar logs came floating down 
to the waiting builders. Here they were 
seized by strong paws, and carried upon 
sturdy backs to their place, in the cobwork 
dam. 

For the first two feet, the dam would be 
built three tiers wide. This would make 



204 Shaggy co at 



the thickness at the base about ten feet. 
The cracks between the logs were plastered 
up with sods and mud or if it seemed to 
call for more weight stones were occasion- 
ally used. 

Soon the logs and drift-wood began to 
come down faster than the three at the dam 
could handle it for it must be laid nicely, 
and often one stick was placed in several 
positions before it suited. It would never 
do to have any of this building material go 
down-stream so two or three of the cutting 
gang were shifted to the dam, and the work 
went on. 

Whenever the logs in the stream grew 
scarce, some of the workers at the dam 
went back to cutting logs. When the logs 
in the current jammed, river-men were 
quickly hurried to loosen them. There was 
one accident that marred the pleasure of 
dam-building and made the day memorable 
in the colony. This did not stop the work r 



The Builders 205 



for these things happen in the woods and 
the waters, where they get used to the un- 
expected. 

One of Shaggycoat's first litter, who was 
now a sturdy beaver of three summers, was 
felling a poplar larger than most of the 
trees which they were using. 

He was a famous wood-cutter, and wanted 
to distinguish himself by cutting a large 
tree. He had worked away all night, and 
when the others stopped at daylight his 
tree was not yet down so he stayed to finish 
it, but, as the morning hours went by and 
he did not return to the lodge, Shaggycoat 
went in search of him. 

He found him lying at the stump of the 
fallen tree with his skull crushed. He had 
evidently tried to take one more bite at the 
tottering tree, when a prudent beaver would 
have stopped, and his head had been crushed 
between the stump and the falling trunk. 

This is an accident that sometimes occurs, 



2o6 Shaggycoat 



although as a whole these little wood-cut- 
ters are very cautious. 

There was nothing to do in this case but 
leave the unfortunate victim where he had 
fallen, but the tree was never used. 

When the dam was two feet high, it was 
narrowed to two tiers of logs. Then they 
could get on faster, but the higher it went, 
the longer it had to be carried out at the 
ends. As the water set back it was much 
easier to float the logs down. 

The three tiers of logs at the bottom of 
the dam were occasionally tied together by 
putting on a log ten feet long that would 
lie across all three tiers. The cutting and 
placing of such a stick would take the com- 
bined strength of four or five beavers. 

When this long stick was ready, extra 
help was summoned and it was rolled into 
the stream. 

About the same tactics were used in plac- 
ing it in the dam, but, when it was once 



The Builders 207 



placed, it tied the three tiers of logs firmly 
together. 

When the water rose too high above the 
dam, a small opening would be made just 
large enough to keep it a little below the 
working line. 

Thus, night after night they worked, fell- 
ing trees, floating down logs, and placing 
them, bringing mud and sods, and slowly 
moulding the whole into a strong symmet- 
rical structure. 

Men would have required skilful engi- 
neers with levels and other instruments and 
much figuring before the work had been be- 
gun, but not so the beaver. The spring 
freshet had done the surveying to Shaggy- 
coat's entire satisfaction, and the small diffi- 
culties were overcome as fast as they arose 
by their remarkable building genius. 

I do not suppose the beaver knew the old 
maxim that " water seeks its level/' but 
they always acted as though they did, 



2o8 Shaggycoat 



and were continually profiting by the 
fact. 

Before the first of December, the dam was 
completed, at least for that year. This kind 
of a dam could be enlarged at any time, as 
the needs of Beaver City grew. 

Then the lodges had to be attended to. 
The new level of water had flooded the 
lower story of the old lodge on the island, 
so the top was ripped off, and a new floor 
laid and another story was added. 

While the old lodges were being repaired, 
four new houses went up, so that the colony 
now numbered seven lodges, while the lake 
stretched back through the lowlands for 
more than a mile. 

Along the newly formed shores, alder 
bushes now stood deep in the water. When 
it had frozen over, and fresh bark could not 
longer be gotten, these bushes would be re- 
membered. 

At last the great freeze came ; the glass 



The Builders 209 



door was shut down over the lake, and Jack 
Frost installed as doorkeeper until spring- 
time. 

But what cared the beaver ? Their lodges 
were now frozen like adamant, and the new 
dam was equal to the task put upon it. 
There were cords of poplar logs stored along 
the dam under the water, and thrust into 
the mud about the lodges, so they could eat 
and sleep while the winter months went 
by. They had done their work well, and 
this was their reward. 



CHAPTER XIII 
BEAVER JOE 



CHAPTER XIII 

BEAVER JOE 

Joe Dubois, or Beaver Joe, as he was 
known to the Factor and his fellow woods- 
men, was the most successful trapper who 
had ever baited steel jaws for the Hudson 
Bay Company in all its long history of two 
hundred and twenty-five years. Not in all 
the howling wilderness from the Great 
Lakes to the mouth of the Mackenzie, and 
from Labrador to the Selkirks, was there 
another who brought in such packs of 
skins. 

Joe's fellow trappers said that mink and 
muskrat would play tag on the pans of his 
traps just for fun, and that the beaver loved 
Joe's body scent on the trap, better than 
its own castor, an oily substance taken from 



214 Shaggy coat 



the beaver and nearly always used in bait- 
ing the trap. 

Joe was a half-breed, his father being a 
Frenchman and his mother an Indian girl. 
It was his father who had given him the 
nickname of Beaver Joe, but his mother 
called him by a long Indian name, which I 
can neither spell nor pronounce, but it 
signified man of many traps. 

This famous woodsman always went 
further into the wilderness than any other 
trapper, and his rounds of traps were spread 
over a larger area. He had to travel fifty 
miles through a trackless wilderness to make 
the circle of his traps. How true his In- 
dian's instinct must have been to scatter 
several hundred traps over an area of fifty 
miles, and then go to them month after 
month unerringly. How easy one could 
have gone astray in the shifting gray 
glooms of the snow-laden forest, which 
changed from week to week as the snow 



Beaver Joe 215 

was piled higher and higher and the full 
fury of winter settled on the land. 

But Joe was never lost, and owing to 
his Indian inheritance, and his knowledge 
of the woods in wind and rain, snow and 
sleet, he rarely lost a trap. 

He always located his cabin at a central 
point where he could return to it every two 
or three days. 

His was not the ordinary shack but a 
well built cabin with a hole about six by 
eight under it called the cellar. 

Why Joe wanted a good cabin, instead of 
a rude shack, and why he took pains to 
make it comfortable, you will see later. 

On the fourth summer of his rambles, 
Shaggycoat went much further from home 
than usual. This nomadic habit grew 
upon him, and each year he visited new 
lakes and streams. But this year he left 
all his old landmarks far behind and pene- 
trated a new country. 



216 Shaggy coat 



Occasionally he saw signs that made 
him think this country was inhabited by 
the strange creature who had visited his 
lake two years before, in the great red duck. 
Something told him that it was a fearful 
country but curiosity and a desire to visit 
new places impelled him on and on. 

Once he heard a loud pounding in the 
forest near the stream, and going cautiously 
forward, saw one of the strange creatures 
standing by a large tree, pounding upon it 
with mighty strokes. He was about to 
turn and flee from the place in haste, when 
he noticed a tremor in the top of the tree. 
He had seen this shudder in a tree many 
times before and knew well what it meant, 
so waited to watch and listen. 

Then the strange creature struck upon 
the tree a few times more and it wavered, 
as though uncertain where to lay its tall 
form. Then with a rush and a roar, and 
a thunderous sound that rolled away 



Beaver Joe 217 

through the forest, it fell and was no more 
a tree, but only a stick of timber. 

When the sable mantle of night had 
been spread over the land and the creature 
who stood on his hind legs and pounded at 
the tree so vigorously had gone away, 
Shaggycoat went ashore and examined his 
work critically. 

Tree-felling was in his line and this 
interested him very much. 

Perhaps the queer creature was a beaver 
after all, for he was cutting trees just as 
they did about his own lake, but when he 
had examined the stump, he felt quite sure 
it was not the work of a beaver. The cleft 
was very smooth, and there were no teeth 
marks. The trunk had been cut in two, 
and here the cut was also smooth. The 
chips were much larger than those left by 
a beaver. 

During the next few days Shaggycoat 
saw signs of much tree-cutting and they 



218 Shaggycozt 



were all evidently cut by the creature who 
pounded on the trunk with his bright stick. 
The following week he came upon some- 
thing that interested and astonished him 
even more than this, and that was a real 
dam, more symmetrical than his own, and 
holding in its strong arms a beautiful lake. 
He was sure that the dam was not made by 
beavers, for many of the logs used in its 
construction were too large for a beaver to 
manage. Besides there was a queer door- 
way in the middle of the dam for the water 
to run through. The lake was rather low 
and considerable water was escaping through 
the door. 

Our industrious dam-builder thought this 
waste of water a great pity, and although 
the dam did not belong to him, he set to 
work and in half a day had stopped the 
sluiceway very effectively. 

This industry greatly astonished the real 
owners of the dam, who discovered it a week 



Beaver Joe 219 

later. They were a party of log-men, who 
had built the dam to help them in getting 
their logs through a long stretch of shallow 
water. 

The following day Shaggycoat came upon 
a great number of logs in the stream. 

They stretched miles and miles, and he 
thought these must be remarkable creatures, 
who could cut so many logs. He also 
thought it was getting to be a perilous 
country, and no place for a beaver who 
wished to live a long life, so he started 
homeward. 

The leaves had just turned red upon the 
soft maple along the little water courses and 
that was a sign that he always heeded. 

The second day of his return journey, 
while wading through a shallow in the 
stream, he put his remaining good fore paw 
in one of Joe Dubois's traps. It was only 
a mink trap, and would not have held, had 
he been given time to wrench himself free, 



220 Shaggycozt 



but he had barely sprung the trap when the 
alder bushes on the bank parted and the 
celebrated trapper, club in hand, stood upon 
the shore within ten feet of the terrified 
beaver. 

" Oh, by gar I " exclaimed Joe at the sight 
of him. " You is just one pig, fine skin by 
gar. I got you. 

" Now you run away, I shoot. You keep 
still, I kill you with my club. That not 
tear you fine coat." 

So Joe got hold of the end of the chain 
and began carefully working the beaver in 
toward him, holding the club ready. 

When he had drawn poor Shaggycoat 
within striking distance he raised the club 
slowly. 

The beaver saw the flash of the sunlight 
on the stick and the sinister look in Joe's 
eye, and something told him that his hour 
had come. He had seen a beaver killed 



Beaver Joe 221 

once by a falling limb, and he knew quite 
well how stiff and motionless he would be 
when the club had descended. All in a 
second the picture of his woodland lake and 
Beaver City flashed before him and there 
was Brighteyes, and the beaver kids all 
waiting expectantly for him ; all the colony 
waiting for his home-coming that they 
might begin repairs upon the dam. 

The sun had never shone so brightly in 
all his life as it did at that moment, and 
the murmur of a brook had never sounded 
so sweet in his ears. But some great lady 
in the far away city was waiting impatiently 
for her cloak, and the factor at the post was 
holding out two bright shillings, so Joe 
brought the club down with a mighty 
stroke. 

But the love of life was strong in Shag- 
gycoat, as it is in nearly all animate things, 
so, quick as a flash, he twitched his head to 



222 Shaggy coat 



one side, and the club fell in the stream 
with a great splash, filling the trapper's 
eyes with water. 

" By gar," ejaculated Joe, blowing the 
water from his mouth, and laying down the 
club to wipe his eyes. " You is one mighty 
slick beaver, that you is, but it wasn't 
smart of you to get into my trap. Dat time 
you was one pig fool." Then a sudden in- 
spiration came to Joe. 

" By gar/' he exclaimed, " I good mind 
to pring you home to my leetle gal. How 
she laugh when she see you. You pehave, 
I do it. You bother me, I prain you." 

Then Joe scratched his head and thought. 
How could it be done ? Finally a plan came 
to him, for he went to the alder bushes and 
cut a crotched stick, and another stick which 
was straight. With the crotched stick, he 
pinned Shaggycoat's neck to the ground, 
while with a piece of buckskin thong taken 
from his pocket he made a tight fitting col- 



Beaver Joe 223 

lar for the beaver's neck. Then with 
another piece of thong he bound his hind 
legs tightly together. When this had been 
done, he passed a stout stick through the 
collar and the other end of it, between the 
beaver's hind legs. He then loosed the trap, 
and, grasping the stick half-way between the 
collar and the thong on the hind legs, 
started off with the unhappy beaver, carry- 
ing him, so that all the landscape looked 
upside down. 

At first, Shaggycoat struggled violently 
but whenever he struggled Joe tapped him 
on the nose with his club and he soon saw 
that his best course was to keep still and let 
his captor carry him wherever he would. 

The stick through the collar choked him 
so that he could hardly breathe, and the 
thong on his hind legs cut into the muscles, 
but even these discomforts were better than 
the club from which he had so narrowly 
escaped, so he behaved very well for a wild 






224 Shaggycoat 



thing and watched Joe's every motion, al- 
ways with a view of making a break for 
freedom at the first opportunity. But there 
seemed little chance of escape as long as the 
stick held him stretched out at his full 
length so that he could not get at his fetters. 

So the woods went by with the trees all 
upside down, sticking their tops into the 
sky. 

The blood surged into Shaggycoat's head, 
and his eyes grew dim. The great sleep 
was coming to him, that into which his 
grandfather had fallen, from which there 
was no awakening. 



CHAPTER XIV 
RUNNING-WATER 



CHAPTER XIV 

KUNNING-WATER 

When Shaggy coat regained his sight and 
full consciousness, for the stick and the tight 
collar on his neck had choked him almost 
into the long sleep, he was lying on the 
floor of what seemed to be a very large lodge, 
only this lodge was square and his own in 
the beaver colony was circular. It was 
many times larger on the inside than even 
the great house in which Shaggycoat's own 
numerous family lived. 

There must be some underground passages, 
he thought, just as there were in the beaver 
house, surely such powerful creatures as 
these would take that precaution. He 
would watch his chance, and before they 
knew it plunge down the tunnel to freedom. 



228 Shaggycoat 



Once in the water, this terrifying creature 
would not get hold of him again. 

There were two of the strangers in the 
great lodge ; the one with the cruel eyes, 
and a look that made Shaggycoat's long 
dark hair stand erect on his neck, and the 
other, smaller, and gentler. 

When the smaller one talked, it was in a 
low, sweet voice that soothed Shaggycoat's 
wild terror of being held a prisoner. 

Her voice reminded him of a little rill 
gurgling through pebbly grottoes, and he 
was glad when she spoke. When Shaggy- 
coat first struggled to consciousness, she had 
been bending over him and somehow he was 
not afraid to have her look at him, for there 
was no murder in her eyes, as there was in 
Joe's. 

" I pring him to you, leetle gal," said 
Joe, " one long way, by gar. He heavy, like 
one pig stone. He your beaver, you got no 
dog. He good pet when you tame him. 



Running- Water 229 

Injun often keep tame beaver in lodge. He 
pretty, Wahawa, don't you think, leetle 
gal?" 

" Yes, very handsome, Joe, and I thank 
you. He will make a good pet if I can tame 
him, but he is rather too old." 

Wahawa, or Running- water, as her people 
called her, was Joe's Indian wife. She had 
been at the mission school for two years, and 
as she was very bright, spoke quite good 
English for the wilderness. 

" See, how he trembles, Joe," she said. 
11 He shakes like the aspen, when the fingers 
of the breezes are playing with it. Do you 
think I can tame him ? " 

" yes, you tame anything," laughed 
Joe. " You tame me and I wild as hawk." 

" See how he starts every time we move 
or speak," said the dusky daughter of the 
forest. " I am afraid we scare his wits out, 
before he knows us." 

Shaggy coat squeezed into the darkest cor- 



230 Shaggycoai 



ner of the shack, where he stood trembling 
with fright. There were many sights and 
smells in the room that filled him with fear. 
First there was the strong repellent man- 
scent. This he always associated with traps 
and the " thunder stick " that killed the 
wild creatures so easily. One of these fear- 
ful things now rested on some hooks against 
the wall and the hooks looked very much 
like a deer's horns. There were a great 
many of those cruel things that lay in the 
water waiting for the paws of beaver or 
otter, hanging upon the wall, suspended by 
the rattling snake-like thing that Shaggy- 
coat knew the sound of, as it clattered over 
the stones. Some of these things were also 
lying on the floor, and, as Joe kicked them 
into a corner, they made the noise that the 
beaver knew so well. 

" Don't, Joe, you scare him," said the 
Indian girl, seeing how the beaver started 
at the sound. 



Running- Water 23 1 

" Py thunder, we not run this shack just 
for one beaver," retorted Joe. " He get used 
to noise. If he don't, I take his coat off, 
then he no mind noise." 

At first the captive beaver was so terrified 
that he noticed almost nothing of his sur- 
roundings, but his eyes roamed wildly about 
for some underground passage through 
which he might escape, and, seeing none, he 
got as far into one corner as he could. 

Presently he noticed what at first looked 
like another beaver lying on the floor asleep 
near him. But there was something strange 
and unnatural about the beaver that filled 
Shaggycoat with fear. 

He seemed to be all flattened out just as 
though a tree or large stone had fallen upon 
him. But even any kind of a beaver's com- 
pany was preferable to these creatures into 
whose power he had fallen, so Shaggycoat 
poked the sleeping beaver, to waken him. 

His nose was not warm and moist, as it 



232 Shaggycoat 



should have been, but dry and hard. Shag- 
gycoat poked again, and the sleeping beaver 
moved, not by his own power, but the slight 
touch he had given had moved him. Again 
the bewildered Shaggycoat nosed his com- 
panion and the sleeper rolled over. 

At the sight that met his eyes, every hair 
upon Shaggycoat's back and neck stood up, 
for the sleeping beaver was not a live beaver 
at all, but merely a beaver skin that had come 
off in some unaccountable manner. He 
had often seen the winter coat of the water- 
snake lying on the bank of the stream, but 
never that of a beaver. What strange un- 
known thing was this that had happened to 
his dead kinsman ! 

Presently Joe opened a trap-door in the 
floor to descend to his improvised cellar, and 
quick as a flash the captive beaver shot down 
ahead of him. But, alas, no fresh cool lake 
opened its inviting arms to receive him as he 
had expected. Instead of this he landed 



Running- Water 233 

with a bump on the bottom of a cold, dark 
hole, which seemed even more like a prison 
than the room above. 

It was something though to be away from 
their eyes, especially Joe's, and it was quiet 
down here and perhaps he could think what 
to do, so Shaggycoat wriggled into a far cor- 
ner and kept very quiet while Joe rummaged 
about for flour and bacon. When he as- 
cended the ladder to the room above, the 
beaver felt less terrified, although he knew 
that his plight was still desperate. 

He had not been long alone when he be- 
gan to dig himself a burrow in one corner 
of the cellar. Perhaps it would lead down 
to the lake, for surely these creatures would 
not be so foolish as to build their lodge on 
the land. Even if he could not strike 
water, the burrow would make a place of 
refuge where he could get away from the 
noise and the man-scent that fairly made 
his nostrils tingle. 



234 Shaggycoat 



So industriously he labored that when 
Wahawa came down the following morning 
to see if the beaver was spoiling their pro- 
visions, she could see nothing of him at 
first. Finally, after flashing the torchlight 
into all the corners, she discovered a pile of 
dirt, and holding the torch down to the 
entrance of the hole, found the beaver star- 
ing wild-eyed and pitifully up at her from 
the bottom of his new hiding-place. 

11 O thou, Puigagis, king of the beavers," 
she cried in a low rippling voice that again 
reminded the prisoner of the purling of a 
tiny stream, " come up to Wahawa, whose 
name is Running-water. She will not hurt 
you. She will feed you and caress you." 
The beaver was always the Indian's friend, 
teaching him industry and the need of a 
store of food for the cold winter months. 

" Come up to Wahawa, O king of the 
beavers, and she will be your friend. The 
great trapper has gone to the lake and the 



Running- Water 235 

streams to visit his many traps and cannot 
harm you ; besides you belong to Running- 
water. Come up and she will be your 
friend." 

But the poor captive only cowered at the 
bottom of his burrow and would not come 
up, so the Indian girl finally went away 
disappointed, but like the rest of her race 
she was patient, and knew that it takes 
days and weeks, or even months to gain the 
confidence of the wild creatures. Neverthe- 
less she had accomplished more than she 
knew, for Shaggycoat was not afraid of her 
voice. There seemed something about its 
tones akin to the wind and the waters ; a 
touch of nature, like the song of a bird or 
the murmur of distant rivers. There was 
something in the voice that told him this 
creature was kind. 

Later on in the day when she brought 
him a maple sapling that she had cut with 
a hatchet, he felt that his confidence in the 



236 Shaggycozt 



kindness of this stranger was not misplaced 
and although he was too frightened and 
homesick to eat, yet it did him good to see 
the tempting bark so near and to know 
that the Indian girl understood his wants. 

When darkness again spread its sombre 
mantle over the land, Shaggycoat, hearing 
Joe's voice in the room above and the rattle 
of chains, as he kicked some traps into one 
corner, scurried into his burrow. 

There were two events in Shaggycoat's 
life during the old days when he had been 
a beaver kid, playing with his brothers and 
sisters on the shores of their forest lake, in 
the old beaver city that he always remem- 
bered in time of peril. Both were startling 
and tragic and they had burned into his 
brain so deeply that he had never forgotten 
them, and he remembered them now in his 
lonely burrow. 

One evening, just at twilight, he had 
been searching in the bushes along the 



Running- Water 237 

shore for wild hops, a favorite dainty with 
young beavers, when he heard a noise in 
the woods close at hand. A strange noise 
always meant, " keep still and watch and 
listen." Although Shaggy coat was only 
five or six months old, the wild instinct of 
animal cunning was strong enough in him 
to prompt this wariness. 

Presently the bushes parted and a tall, 
imperious creature came striding down to 
the lake. As he was coming directly for 
the spot where the young beaver was con- 
cealed, Shaggycoat made haste to scramble 
into the water, where he hid under the lily 
pads. 

At the sound of his splashing, the tall 
creature stopped and snorted and stamped. 
He, too, was suspicious of strange noises, 
but, finally concluding that it was either a 
big bullfrog or a musquash, he strode down 
and began drinking in the lake. He stood 
very close to Shaggycoat, who should have 



238 Shaggycozt 



kept quiet and let the stranger drink in 
peace, but curiosity, which is strong in 
many wild creatures, prompted the young 
beaver to peep out from under his lily pad 
screen at the tall stranger. 

Shaggycoat did not think that the buck 
looked harmful so he slowly edged out 
from under the pads to get a better look 
at him. Then quick as a flash one of 
those slender hoofs rose and fell, and the 
young beaver went kicking to the bottom, 
leaving a bright streak of blood behind 
him. One of the older beavers found him 
half an hour later, lying on his back in the 
lily pads, stunned and bleeding. His head 
did not resume its normal size for several 
days, but the event taught him a lesson 
that he never forgot and after that day 
curiosity was always tempered with pru- 
dence. 

The second event that Shaggycoat could 
never forget happened like the first just at 



Running- Water 239 

dusk. This time neither he nor his brother 
with whom he was playing was at fault, 
but the thing happened, as things do in the 
woods and the waters, and when the ripple 
had passed, the lake was as placid and 
smiling as ever. 

They were playing in the shallows. The 
game might have been water-tag, or per- 
haps it was just rough and tumble, but, in 
either event, they were having a jolly time. 
The sun had just set in a blaze of glory at 
the upper end of the lake and long shad- 
ows were stealing across the water. Then 
upon the stillness there broke a peculiar 
sound, who-o-o, who-o-o, who-o-o, who-0-0 ; 
the first few notes long and loud, and 
the last short and soft like an echo. It 
was the hunting cry of the great horned 
owl, going forth on his twilight quest for 
food. There were two impatient owlets in 
the top of a tall tree, back in the woods 
who were waiting for their supper of mice 



240 Shaggycoat 



and chipmunks or small birds. But 
Shaggycoat and his brother had never 
even heard of the great horned owl so 
they continued their romp in the lily 
pads. 

Who-o-o, who-o-o, who-o-o, who-o-o, came 
the cry again, this time close at hand, but 
the young beavers continued their play and 
the great horned owl his hunt. 

Suddenly Shaggycoat noticed something 
large above them that darkened the sky 
and which kept flapping like the bushes 
along the lake when the wind blew. There 
were two fiery, yellow balls and a strong 
hook between them, and two other sets of 
hooks that looked sharp as the brambles on 
the thorn-bush. This much Shaggycoat 
saw, for the great flapping thing was just 
above them and much nearer than he 
wished. Then a set of hooks reached 
down and gripped his brother in the back 
of the neck and bore him aAvay. Higher 



Running- Water 24 1 

and higher the strange thing went, carry- 
ing the owlets' supper in the strong set of 
hooks, and Shaggycoat knew by the pit- 
eous cry floating back that something 
dreadful had happened, but he was too 
young to understand just what. 

Then a strange terror of the woods and 
the shore came over him and he fled to 
the lodge and did not leave it again for 
days. 

Where his brother went, and who the 
stranger was, Shaggycoat never knew, but 
the owlets in the top of the tall tree in the 
deep woods tasted beaver meat and found 
it good. 



CHAPTER XV 
KING OF BEAVERS 



CHAPTER XV 

KING OF BEAVERS 

" Joe," said Wahawa to the trapper one 
evening, as they sat by the fire, munching 
corn bread and bacon, " I believe you have 
caught the sacred beaver of my people, the 
good Puigagis, King of all the Beavers." 

Joe laughed. " Py gar, what foolishness 
you tink in your hade now. You is one 
foolish leetle gal, he your sacred beaver, 
you say ? " 

But Wahawa did not laugh. She looked 
very serious as she replied, " It is nothing 
to laugh at, Joe. If this is really the 
sacred beaver, no good will come of it. 
Did you notice he had lost one forepaw ? 
My people always let a maimed beaver 
go when they trap him because of some- 



246 Shaggy coat 



thing that happened many moons ago. 
Listen, Joe, and I will tell." 

The man of many traps looked inter- 
ested for he, too, was touched with super- 
stition, and fearful of anything that might 
affect his good luck as a trapper. 

" As many moons ago as the old pine 
back of the shack has needles on its 
boughs," began Wahawa, " the Great Spirit 
became angry with my people. The 
squaws said it was because the warriors 
went on the war-path instead of killing 
and preparing meat for the winter months, 
and the braves said it was because the 
squaws were lazy and did not raise corn. 
But for one reason or another the Manito 
was angry so he covered the face of the sun 
with his right hand, and it was like a sick 
man's smile, and he covered the moon and 
the stars by night with his blanket and 
they were no longer bright, but like a 
camp-fire that has gone out. 



King of Beavers 247 

" The corn did not grow in the summer- 
time, and the snow and the wind were fu- 
rious in the winter. 

11 Such cold as this was never known in 
the land before and never since. The ice 
froze so deeply on lake and river that it 
could not be broken and no fish could be 
taken. The deer all yarded in the deep 
forest and did not stir abroad so the hunters 
could not find them, and many perished 
before spring. Still deeper and deeper fell 
the snow and colder and colder grew the 
breath of the wind, and the kiss of the frost 
was like death. 

11 The warm skins of bear and beaver were 
no longer warm and the camp-fire had lost 
its heat. 

" Finally, the warriors were obliged to kill 
their ponies, and the wolves, running in 
great packs, came down to help with the 
feast. At night they would stand about the 
camp, just on the border of the firelight, 



248 Shaggycoat 



watching and waiting. They seemed to 
know that powder and ball were low in the 
pouch of the warrior, and that he no longer 
had strength to draw the bow. They knew 
that the camp-fires would soon go out, and 
the warriors and the squaws fall asleep at 
their post. So the great gray wolfs watched 
and waited for they knew that the hour of 
feasting was near at hand. 

" Then my grandmother, who was the 
daughter of the chief, and whose withered 
lips told me the story, had a dream. 

" She dreamed that Puigagis, the King of 
the Beavers, came into her lodge and spoke 
to her in the tongue of her people. 

" < Singing Bird, daughter of the great 
chief/ he said, and his voice was sweet to 
hear. ■ The great spirit was angry because 
his warriors did not hunt, and the women 
were lazy, but he has seen the suffering of 
thy people, and the great wolf, Famine, 
looking in at your lodges. This melted his 



King of Beavers 249 

anger and he has sent me to save your peo- 
ple. Tell your father, the chief, to send his 
warriors in the morning to a valley, one 
day's march to the northward, and they 
shall find a colony of beavers as large as an 
Indian village. Many lodges they shall see, 
and all will contain beaver meat, and warm 
furs to protect them and their women 
against the wind and frost. I, Puigagis, the 
King of all the Beavers, will go before them 
to show the way. My own life and all the 
lives of my kind I will give to save the lives 
of the redmen and their daughters.' 

11 Then the wind lifted Puigagis, King of 
the Beavers, in its strong arms and bore him 
away over the tree-tops. 

" The daughter of the chief awoke and 
saw that the camp-fire was very low, and 
that the wind was shaking the tepee as 
though to tear it down. When she put new 
faggots on the fire and it blazed up, she saw 
there were beaver tracks on the snow and 



250 Shaggycoat 



her dream had been true. She awoke her 
father, the chief, who called his warriors and 
they examined the tracks in the snow and 
saw that they were the tracks of a beaver ; a 
beaver of great size, who had lost one fore- 
paw in a trap. 

" The chief then bade his warriors make 
ready for in the morning they would go to 
the lake of which the King of the Beavers 
had spoken. 

" In the morning the sun was brighter 
than it had been for weeks, and they started 
out with more hope than they had felt for 
many moons. They went due north as 
Puigagis, the King of the Beavers, had 
directed, and, whenever they were uncertain 
of the way, they would examine the snow 
and always at just the right moment 
would find the tracks of the three-footed 
beaver. 

" Although he went on the wings of the 
wind, he touched the snow every mile or 



King of Beavers 251 

two that they might not go astray and miss 
the Beaver Lake. 

" Late in the afternoon, when they were 
weary and very cold with the long march, 
they came to a beautiful valley, and there 
before them, covered with snow, stretched 
the broad bosom of the lake. 

" Here and there showing their domes 
above the ice were beaver lodges, many 
more than the oldest hunters had ever seen. 
On the top of the largest lodge of all sat 
Puigagis, King of all the Beavers, and the 
warriors saw that his right forepaw had been 
taken off by a trap. A moment he sat there 
as though in welcome, then disappeared as 
if the lodge had opened and swallowed him. 

" Then the warriors built great fires upon 
the ice, made a hole in the beaver dam with 
their hatchets and strong stakes which they 
cut in the woods, and destroyed the entire 
colony, with the exception of the great lodge 
of Puigagis, King of all the Beavers. This 



252 Shaggycozt 



they would not touch, lest evil befall them ; 
nor will they take the skin of a maimed 
beaver to this day. 

" They loaded their packs with meat and 
skins until they bent beneath them. The 
wind and weather befriended them on their 
homeward journey. The beaver meat and 
the new skins kept life in the Indian village 
until the great Spirit lifted his hand from 
the face of the sun, till flowers and birds 
returned and the children of the woods 
were again glad. 

" But the three-footed beaver they will 
not trap or harm to this day and it is an ill 
omen to hold one captive. 7 ' 

" Dat ees vun fine story," commented Joe, 
as the narrator finished. " Maybe he true, 
maybe he not. I do not know me. But he 
ver good," and Joe blew rings of blue smoke 
and watched them meditatively. 

11 Did you ever hear how the beaver got 
his flat tail? " asked Wahawa. 



King of Beavers 253 

11 By gar, no, I tink he always have he. 
Tell one more pretty story, leetle gal." 

" Well, this was the way," replied the 
Indian girl. 

" Many, many moons ago, so long ago 
that it is only known by pictures that my 
people cut in stone, there was a King 
Beaver, wiser and larger than all his fel- 
lows. In those days, the beaver had a 
round bushy tail like the raccoon, but he 
saw one day when he was building a house 
that it would be very handy to have a flat 
tail. He pondered long on how to get it. 
Finally a plan came to him and he called 
the four strongest beavers in the land and 
told them to bring a large flat stone. 

" When they had brought the stone, the 
King Beaver placed his tail upon another 
flat stone and made the four strong beavers 
drop the stone they had brought upon his 
tail. It hurt him very much but he shut 
his teeth tight and thought how nice it 



254 Shaggy coat 



would be to have a flat tail. When they 
lifted the stone off his tail, it was not as flat 
as he wished, so they tried again, but still 
it did not suit him, but he thought they 
had flattened it enough for that day. 

" Every day for a week he had the four 
strong beavers drop the stone on his tail 
until at last it was flat enough. After that 
he used it so much in handling mud that 
the hair soon wore off, and it looked just as 
the beaver tail does now. The descendants 
of this beaver all had flat tails, and they 
were so much stronger and better workmen 
that they survived all the other kinds and 
the round-tailed beavers soon became ex- 
tinct. 

" There is another Indian legend about 
how the beaver learned to build houses. 
Once an Indian caught a beaver in a pitfall 
and took him home to his wigwam where 
he kept him all winter. The beaver saw 
how warm and nice the Indian house was 



King of Beavers 255 

and the following fall when he escaped he 
built himself a mud house as near like the 
Indian's as he could, and he was the first 
beaver to live in a lodge. " 

" Ver good stories/' commented Joe. " Ver 
good. Maybe they true, maybe they not, 
but I tink He make um beaver tail flat, 
because He know the beaver want a flat 
tail. And for He," Joe pointed with his 
thumb to the roof of the shack, " He give 
de eagle hees strong wing because he live 
in the cloud, an' de fish fins, because he 
want to swim. He made de deer with 
springs in his laigs because he got no teeth 
to bite his enemy, nor claws. He made de 
fox cunning becase he not strong, so he 
run mighty fast like de wind. De wildcat 
an' de bar, He also give claws an' strong 
arms, so they all lib an' not starb. 

" De flower it smile, an' de tree talk an' 
de wind an' de water they better company 
than much folks. Dar no lie in de woods. 



2 56 Shaggycoat 



Dar all tings good. He make all tings ver 
good, by gar. Me like um wind an' water. 
They all make me glad." 

One day when Shaggycoat had been in 
captivity about a week, Wahawa came down 
to his burrow and coaxed and dragged him 
out. He was not so much afraid of her as 
he had been and he loved the sound of her 
voice, for it was like the water slipping be- 
tween stones. But when she had brought 
him forth, Wahawa did something that both 
astonished and frightened the beaver, for, 
quick as a flash, she threw a camp blanket 
over his head, and before he had time to 
bite, she had gathered up the four corners 
and Shaggycoat was a prisoner in an impro- 
vised bag. 

Although he bit and clawed at the 
blanket, it was so soft and yielding that he 
could make no impression on it, so he finally 
lay still and let the Indian girl do with him 
what she would. She talked to him all the 



King of Beavers 257 

time in that low rippling voice which some- 
what allayed his fear. 

She slowly ascended the ladder leading to 
the room above with the heavy load upon 
her back and then rested him for a moment 
on the floor. 

What new peril awaited him, Shaggycoat 
did not know. Maybe his coat was to be 
taken off now, and he would be just like the 
poor beaver he had seen the first night of 
his captivity. But Wahawa soon lifted him 
to her strong back again and bore him away, 
he knew not where. When she had carried 
him about a quarter of a mile over rough 
country, she laid down her burden, and, to 
the great astonishment of the beaver, 
dropped the four corners of the blanket 
and the beautiful world that Shaggycoat had 
known before his captivity, the world with 
a sky and fresh green trees and bushes with 
grass and sweet smelling air, was before him. 
But better than all that a swift stream 



258 Shaggycoat 



was flowing almost at his very feet. The 
music of its rippling made him wild with joy. 
Here was freedom almost within reach. 
But his captor was standing by and the 
buckskin collar was still about his neck and 
he imagined it held him in some mysterious 
manner. He looked up at the Indian girl 
with large pleading eyes, and she under- 
stood his misgivings, so she drew the hunt- 
ing knife from her belt and severed the 
buckskin collar. It had cut into his neck 
for so long that the beaver did not realize 
it was gone until he saw it lying on the 
ground, then his heart gave a great bound. 
Was freedom to be his after all ? His nos- 
trils dilated as he looked furtively about. 
There was his captive standing by him and 
her eyes were full of kindness. There was 
the water calling to him, calling as it 
had never called before, but he did not 
quite know what it all meant. Then the 
Indian girl spoke and he understood. 



King of Beavers 259 

11 Go, Puigagis, King of the Beavers," she 
said. " Go and be happy after thy kind. 
We have held thee captive too long. Go at 
once, lest evil befall us." 

With a sudden jump, a scramble and a 
great splash, Shaggycoat clove the water of 
the deep pool at their feet. The ripples 
widened and widened and a few bubbles rose 
to the surface as the dark form sank from 
sight and Puigagis disappeared as suddenly 
from the life of the Indian girl as though 
the earth had opened and swallowed him. 

Once she thought she saw a dark form 
gliding stealthily along under the shadow 
of the further bank, but was not sure. Al- 
though she watched and listened for a long 
time, she saw or heard nothing of him. 
Puigagis, King of the Beavers, had gone to 
his kind. The lakes and the streams had 
reclaimed their wilderness child, and the 
Indian girl was glad. 



CHAPTER XVI 
OLD SHAG 



CHAPTER XVI 

OLD SHAG 

Eight years have now passed since Shag- 
gycoat brought his mate into the beautiful 
wilderness valley, and they had proceeded 
to make it habitable, according to the ideas 
of a beaver. 

Wonderful changes have taken place in 
the alder meadow since then, and one would 
not know it to be the same spot. It is no 
more an alder meadow, but a beautiful forest 
lake stretching away into the distance until 
it is lost between the foothills, nearly two 
miles above the dam. On either side, the 
sparkling waters flow back to the amphi- 
theatre of hills that enfold it and the lake 
is altogether like a wonderful sparkling 
jewel set in the emerald surrounding of the 
foothills. 



264 Shaggycoat 



Each summer, during his wanderings, 
Shaggycoat has met other wanderers like 
himself, and many of them have returned 
with him to his mountain lake. Even the 
first autumn, when he returned with his 
amputated paw, a pair of sleek beavers 
came with him, so there were two beaver 
lodges in the pond during the second winter 
instead of one. The dam was also strength- 
ened and broadened during that second 
autumn until the pond was twice its original 
size. 

The third spring Shaggycoat's own first 
family of beavers left the lodge to roam 
during the summer months, and to return 
in the autumn with mates. This is the ar- 
rangement in a well ordered beaver lodge. 
The children stay with their parents until 
they are three years of age, so a lodge 
usually contains the babies, the yearlings 
and two-year-olds, who allow themselves 
shelter under the family lodge until their 



Old Shag 265 

third birthday, when they are shoved out 
to make room for the babies who have just 
come. So there is a general nose breaking 
at this time, and the elders are sent into the 
world while all the rest are promoted. But 
I do not imagine that they have to be 
shoved very hard, for their love of freedom 
and wild life, and also the mating instinct, 
is calling to them that third year, and they 
always obey the call of nature. 

It must not be imagined that the little 
dam originally built on the spot, flows all 
this broad expanse of country, for, as we 
have already seen, year by year it has been 
added to, until now the gorge is blocked by 
a log and stone structure that would do 
credit to man, with all his building and en- 
gineering skill. It seems to me that the 
beaver, with his building instinct, and his 
ingenuity in making his world over to suit 
his manner of life, more nearly resembles 
man than any other wild creature. 



266 Shaggycoat 



Each beaver colony is a veritable city, 
and each lodge contains a large and well 
ordered family. 

The house is always scrupulously clean, 
and each member of the family has his own 
bed which he occupies. The front gate is 
surrounded by a moat, like the castles of 
old, and the drawbridge is always up. 

The beaver is a veritable Venitian, and 
his city is a real Venice, with its waterway 
and its islands of solid earth upon which 
stand the houses of its many citizens. The 
new dam which is most important to Beaver 
City, for it holds the water above the en- 
trances of the score or more of houses, is a 
fine structure about two hundred feet in 
length, and nine feet in diameter at its base. 
Into the structure many thousand logs have 
been rolled, some of them coming from two 
or three miles up the lake, for timber is not 
so plentiful near to the dam as it was. 

The engineering genius of this huge un- 



'■ Old Shag 267 

dertaking was Shaggycoat, who sat upon his 
broad flat tail and directed his many work- 
men. Near by, seated upon the top of one 
of the lodges, a sentinel was always posted 
while they worked. He warned them of 
danger, and they gave their whole attention 
to the work. At the first suspicious sound 
he would bring his broad tail down upon 
the water with a resounding slap that could 
be heard all along the dam, and all through 
Beaver City, for water is very mobile, and 
conducts motion or sound easily. At this 
well-known signal, the workers who, a mo- 
ment before, might have been lifting and 
tugging logs or laying on mortar, would 
disappear as though the lake had opened 
and swallowed them. This was really just 
what happened, but the waters did not 
open ; they were always waiting and ready 
to receive their little water folks. 

For a few moments the lake would be as 
quiet as though there were not a beaver in 



268 Shaggycoat 



the whole shimmering expanse, then a 
brown muzzle, dripping water, would be 
cautiously thrust up from some shady 
corner of the dam, and a careful reconnais- 
sance made. When the beaver had made 
sure that it was a false alarm, he would call 
the rest and work would go on as before. 

Most of the conical shaped houses, of 
which there are now about twenty, are on 
islands or on the bank near the dam. They 
look as much like a small Indian village, 
as they do like the abodes of wild animals. 

For a long time, the overflow water from 
the lake troubled the beavers by wearing 
away their dam, but, finally, they dug a 
little channel in the sand around one end 
of the dam, and now the water runs off 
nicely in this artificial duct, and the dam is 
left unimpaired by the flow. If you could 
stand upon this dam, partly overgrown by 
willows, and see the symmetrical structure 
and the little lodges of Beaver City above, 



Old Shag 269 

and the sparkling water running nicely 
away in the sluiceway, you would marvel 
at the ingenuity and patience of these in- 
genious rodents. But the wisest and oldest 
head in the colony is that of Shaggycoat, or 
old Shag, as I shall now call him, for he 
was the pioneer of the city, and his was the 
first lodge on the large island. 

Little by little he has seen his lake widen 
and broaden, and one by one new lodges 
have been reared, until now, as he sits upon 
his broad tail and views Beaver City from 
the vantage ground of the dam, he must be 
well satisfied with his planning, for it is all 
his world and he loves it as each wild crea- 
ture does the element it inhabits. To his 
ears the sound of running water is sweetest 
music, and the roar of the freshet, which 
fills man with dismay has no terrors for 
him ; he knows it is only his beloved water 
world, wild and turbulent, with the joy of 
melting snow, and the bliss of spring rains. 



270 Shaggycoat 



He also knows that soon the buds will 
start and the birds sing, and he will be off 
for his summer ramble. He has never out- 
grown the habit of wandering during the 
summer months, but autumn will surely 
see him back directing repairs upon the 
dam and seeing that the winter supply of 
unpeeled logs is stored. It takes a great 
many logs to supply Beaver City with food 
now so that when the winter supply is piled 
up in the water in front of the dam, it 
would probably make several cords. If you 
could have seen the everchanging beauty of 
that forest lake through spring, summer, 
autumn and winter, you would not have 
been surprised that the beavers were well 
satisfied with their surroundings, or that the 
water seemed always to be calling to them 
in low sweet tones. 

When the spring freshet filled their lake 
to overflowing, the ice piled up against the 
dam, and the mad waters rushed through 



Old Shag 271 

the crevasse roaring and hissing like an in- 
furiated monster. Though the waters were 
angry and tossed the great cakes of ice 
about disdainfully, yet the foam upon its 
fretful surface looked soft as wool and the 
little water folks knew that the anger would 
pass, even as the fury of the spring wind. 

Finally the water would go down, and 
the lake would become clear and calm. 
Then it was a wonderful opal like the 
spring sky from which it took its color. 
When the warm spring winds kissed its 
sparkling surface, it dimpled and sparkled, 
and little wavelets lapped the pebbly beach 
with a low soft sound. 

Then June came with its lily pads, and 
the pickerel grass in the shallows along the 
edge, and the waters near shore were green 
like emerald. July brought the lilies, 
whose mysterious sweetness ravished the 
nostrils, and whose creamy white faces nes- 
tled among the green pads in sweet content. 



272 Shaggy coat 



The summer passed like a wonderful 
dream with soft skies, balmy winds, and 
warm delightful waters in which to swim, 
but the male beavers over three years of age 
were always away during the summer, and 
the lake was left to the females and the 
youngsters. 

Soon autumn came and the maples back 
in the foothills were made gorgeous by the 
first frost. The merry fall winds soon rat- 
tled down showers of scarlet, crimson, yellow 
and golden leaves till the waters along the 
edge of the lake were as bright as the 
branches above. Even then the trees were 
all reflected in the lake, so it had its own 
beauty as well as that of the world above 
it. 

When the first frost came, the male beav- 
ers returned to repair the dam, and build 
new lodges or repair the old ones. These 
were active nights when the sky was so 
thick with stars that there was hardly room 



Old Shag 273 

for more, and the Milky Way was bright 
and luminous. 

When the clear glass window was shut 
down over the lake and the beavers in their 
snug city were made prisoners for the 
winter, December had come. 
y Then the whole lake sparkled like a jewel, 
and by night it vied with the stars for 
mysterious beauty ; but soon the lake would 
be covered with snow, and then it would 
be a wonderful marble floor, smooth as a 
board stretching away as far as the eye 
could reach. 

There snugly locked under the ice, where 
not even the gluttonous wolverine can dig 
them out, with plenty of food for the com- 
ing winter, let us leave the inhabitants of 
Beaver City, happy in the assurance that 
spring will come again when their lake 
will be warm and bright, nestling like a 
wonderful jewel on the breast of mother 
earth. 



LE My '09 



